Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser is to give her first live performances since 2012 on tour with Massive Attack next year. The Bristol group have announced a 20th-anniversary tour of their third album, Mezzanine, on which Fraser sings the band’s best-known single, Teardrop.
The full lineup is yet to be announced, but could include reggae singer Horace Andy and Bristol producer Neil Davidge. Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall will be on the tour, but founding member Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles, who left the group shortly after the release of Mezzanine, will not join.
Designed by Del Naja, the tour’s audiovisual production has been “reconstructed from the original samples and influences”, say the band. He described the show as the band’s “own personalised nostalgia nightmare head trip”.
Teardrop was the second single from Mezzanine. Fraser was originally in competition with Madonna to sing on over the distinctive harpsichord riff. She wrote the song’s lyrics, which were inspired by the works of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.
Fraser found out while recording the track that her friend Jeff Buckley had died from drowning. In 2009, she told the Guardian that she considers the song to be “kind of about him”. Fraser gave her last live performance at the 2012 Meltdown festival.
Mezzanine entered the UK album chart at No 1 in April 1998 and was certified platinum five months later. Reviewing the album for NME, critic Keith Cameron said: “It’s hard to think of another band since Joy Division with such an aptitude for articulating the despair that lurks at the very heart of darkness.”
The album continues to influence modern musicians. In a retrospective review for Pitchfork published last year, Nate Patrin drew comparisons between the dark sound of Mezzanine and the work of James Blake, Burial, FKA Twigs and Young Fathers.
The Mezzanine tour commences at Glasgow SSE Hydro on 28 January.
