Garlands

Garlands was released by 4AD on 10 July 1982 and is the only full-length album Cocteau Twins made with Will Heggie. Eric Radcliffe and John Fryer engineered it at Blackwing Studios, with Ivo Watts-Russell credited alongside the band as producer, and Gordon Sharp of Cindytalk sang backing vocals on Dear Heart, Hearsay Please and Hazel. It peaked in the top five of the UK independent albums chart, and had reached number fourteen by 2 August 1982. The sleeve was designed by Nigel Grierson as a college project to draft alternative covers for The Scream by Siouxsie and the Banshees, and lyrics from four songs are printed on the inner sleeve.

Before the album the band recorded a four-track John Peel session in 1982, and a second followed in January 1983. Robin Guthrie told Penny Black Music in 2006 that the band used to run their drum box through fuzz pedals and guitar amps, but in the studio the technicians would not let them, so the drums came out clean and drum-machine pristine. His verdict was that it was disappointing. The band's roadie Collin Wallace recalled that the record was written off in Britain as another Siouxsie copy band, and Spin wrote that it sounded like Siouxsie and the Banshees with echo and smeared mascara.