Four-Calendar Café

Four-Calendar Café was released by Fontana on 18 October 1993, the first Cocteau Twins album after the band left 4AD. Fraser and Guthrie ended their 13-year relationship that year. Guthrie went into rehab and quit alcohol and drugs, and Fraser underwent psychotherapy. Fraser said that everything on the record is in English and audible. The title comes from William Least Heat-Moon's book Blue Highways, and the cover photograph is by Walter Wick.

Evangeline came out as the lead single on 20 September 1993 and Bluebeard on 14 February 1994. Performing Bluebeard on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was the band's American television debut. The album reached thirteen in Britain and seventy-eight on the Billboard 200, and had sold about 146,000 copies in the United States by 1996. Raymonde later said he thought it was an amazing record. Pitchfork wrote that Evangeline begins with a guitar being picked, "something more identifiable than Guthrie had ever offered." Faye Wong covered Bluebeard and Know Who You Are at Every Age in 1994, and her version of Bluebeard is heard in the film Chungking Express.