Ivo

..the song is presumably named after the producer Ivo Watts Russell - who produced many of the artists on the 4AD label.

people explode pandora pompadour pele be sweet persephone

we all adore the turning ball he turned to her adore a poor animal we all adore the turning ball he turned to her adore the poor animal

breath on you breath out we're all bloody

people explode pandora pompadour pele be sweet persephone

we all adore the turning ball he turned to her adore a poor animal we all adore the turning ball he turned to her adore the poor animal

people explode pandora pompadour pele be sweet persephone

What I can't help laughing at is you guys trying to make out lyrics that are not even in English..

... why do people keep wasting space with comments that LF didn't know what she was singing about and was 'on drugs anyway', ??

firstly - do you say that about Van-Gogh, Edgar Alle Poe or Picasso? Do you say it about Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday? or Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stones?

secondly - even if LF was unaware of what parts of her psyche she was revealing in her poetic dot-joining exercise, there is still plenty of meaning to be found.

thirdly - fair enough: to pin down lyric meanings to a single interpretation is a fatuous exercise, of course, however to deny speculation is just as fetchless - more so in fact as it discourages our further exploration of possible meaninglets, and as far as I can tell, LF's intention was for each of us to decide anew what the song means to us at the time we listen to it and so be pulled into an experience with the Now.

almost all analysis suffers from one-dimensional thinking, as once we have struggled to find An answer it is easier to cling to it than to put it in an undecided space and go looking for more possibilities. This leads to heinous, yet easily avoidable erreurs, and we then get labelled as a 'person who thinks like X'. which produces further errors. we try to communicate, but instead we are misinterpreted and everyone ends up with their own ideas about what we meant to convey...

I have written too much, but might share about what the song means to me somewhere another time!

Trying to understand CT lyrics is like playing mornington Crescent

this song sure is beautiful.

Not sure you can write the lyrics for this or any of the CT's songs from this wonderful treasure of an album. I heard this in 1984 whilst listening to the great John Peel show. 1984 was a great year for British music (in my view it has yet to surpassed for sheer breadth of music styles). This album was haunting, poetic and calming. Liz's voice is fantastic. This is my favourite of all CT albums and I particularly like this opening track.

I have a hard time reading these 'lyrics' without busting a gut. If there ever was an example of 'let it be' regarding the Cocteau's, this is it. Yes, it's very likely she sings the word 'pompadour', but Liz' thing was about texture for this album--she made the music incredibly special but let it do the talking also.

I agree - this whole excercise pointless for the cocteau twins, surely?

Elizabeth has admitted lyrics would often change with each singing anyway . . .

I agree. Trying to decipher CT lyrics is almost always an exercise in futility. She could be singing in gaelic here for all we know.

What I can't help laughing at is you guys trying to make out lyrics that are not even in English, at least not totally. Of course there are those songs from Garlands, Milk And Kisses, Heaven Or Las Vegas etc which are indeed in English but as for other ones such as these from Treasure, it has been said so many times that these are words from different languages put together and people still force English lyrics upon them just because they want to make some sense of them. They may have some subjective meaning but this doesn't help, unless you are just joking about making out their lyrics.