Primary members: Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser, Simon Raymonde, Will Heggie
Band Biography
Albums of focus: Garlands (1982) and selected singles
Songs for study:

"Blind Dumb Deaf"	"Wax and Wane" - (Live, 1982) "Wax and Wane" (Live, 1983)	"Garlands"	"Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" - (Live)
"Pink Orange Red" - (Live)	"Millimillenary" (Live)	"Shallow Then Halo"	"Lorelei"
	"Bluebeard"	"Theft, and Wandering Around Lost"

"Especially for a Scottish person, it's always remarkable to know that this most poetic music emerged, and began its journey round the globe, from Grangemouth, a town dominated by what seems to be an endless series of enormous oil refineries and chemical plants; out among the estuaries, gas burn-offs throw shadows up into the low cloud base, countless gangway lights maze on themselves and the night is a density of arc lamps. The sets of Bladerunner have existed there for years."

- Alan Warner, journalist

"We seemed to have come out with a style of music that, you know, gave people a lot of room to think."

--Robin Guthrie, guitarist/songwriter

Liz Fraser on her singing and lyrics:

"See, I find that my lyrics don't have any meanings. They're not proper. Although I've got a great dictionary of them. It's like the Cockney rhyming slang or something....they don't mean anything, though, that's the thing. You know all the transcendent sounds. It's all sound all the way through."

"A lot of the stuff I was singing about [in the early 1980's] was all metaphorical. I wasn't talking like I am now. I guess it's back to how much personal power you feel that you have. Like, if I'm 17 and I don't even know when I'm hungry, am I tired, have I had any sleep - if you don't even know that, then how can you talk about lyrics that come from such an unconscious place? I always said 'I don't' know', and I didn't."

"That was the point this time [Four-Calendar Café], to make them mean something. I can see that now in retrospect. Back then [Blue Bell Knoll], with the sounds, I thought I was being really honest, but now I think I'm being a lot more honest by writing things down and then singing it." [Lime Lizard Magazine, 1993].

"I've just recently realized that I'm a very secretive person, that I'm constantly covering up for myself. I'm only just realizing how much. I don't really know what's happening. I hope it doesn't mean that I won't allow myself to do more things like Blue Bell Knoll. I'd like to be able to do everything. You see, on that album, I was still expressing the same things. I was still feeling the same feelings, but I wasn't getting caught up in them. I was just feeling into a fucking microphone. I really was getting caught up in them on this album [Four-Calendar Café]. It was very painful. And the lyrics aren't even that explicit."

"What I've got to do is get honest, to stop doing what I was doing. Unfortunately, and this is typical of me, I tend to go from one extreme to the other. To go from an album like Blue Bell Knoll, which is so heavily disguised and removed from reality, to Heaven or Las Vegas, or even more to this one, where everything on it is in English and it's all audible...it is extreme, I think. But it seems important for me to do that." [Raygun, 1993].

"It's amazing though, yeah, I mean that's...I mean really the records are...a representation of our coping skills...and I think...I was very much in denial...and I think that you can hear that on the album [Blue Bell Knoll]...you know, not one word can you grasp...giving anything away...it just wasn't allowed..."

"What they are [pre-Four-Calendar Café lyrics], are words that I've taken from...maybe seen written down...in a language that I don't understand, and liking them...and maybe...making new words as well out of them. I mean I've got reams and reams of words that I don't have a clue what they mean, but...I wanted them because, I knew I'd be able to express myself without giving anything away." [NPR Interview, 1993].

"The catch is I can barely talk English, isn't it? I quite like that. Combining words in different languages that I couldn't understand just meant that I could concentrate on the sound and not get caught up in the meaning."

 

"Wax and Wane" - Live Amsterdam, Netherlands (29 January 1983)

"Garlands" - from Garlands (1982)

"Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" - live at Restaurang Continental, Örebro, Sweden 1984

We'll be sold to Roddy Comes for pearly dewdrop's drops Weeks in our company Buys the pearly dewdrop's drops We'll be soaked and ruddy Comes for pearly dewdrop's drops Weeks in our company Buys the pearly dewdrop's drops We'll be soaked when Roddy comes Rows of pearly dewdrop's drops Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny Buys the pearly dew drips soaks We'll be soaked when around he comes Rows of pearly dewdrop's drops Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny Buys the pearly dew drips soaks

Taciturn to fellow So try to turn to loan him these Bruised your eye on her staff So when he turned around he saw Taciturn to fellow So try to turn to loan him these Bruised your eye on her staff So if we send the Roddy, soaks We'll be soaked when Roddy comes Rows of pearly dewdrop's drops Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny Buys the pearly dew drips soaks (x4) (We'll be sold to Roddy, sold to Roddy) Rows of pearly dewdrop's drops (We'll be sold to Roddy, sold to Roddy) Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny Buys the pearly dew drips soaks

"Pink Orange Red" - live, British TV, December 1985

Endrosis - osis Lotella - ella Endrosis - osis Vivigeossa - ossa Meliteae phoebus hyala phoebus hyala cloeyessa Meliteae phoebus hyala phoebus hyala nossinussa Sesia - ia Sultitan - itan Sesia - ia Totella - ella Hymeae saturnia hymeae nossinussa Vacua venessula vacua nekitella Tuphia vanessa venessa enovalla Sacyare oponalla oponalla hyniassa

Ho Fa - manofilla - ho Fa - manofilla - ho Fa - manofilla - do Nosialla - do Nosialla - do Nosialla - ho Manofilla Donosialla

"Lorelei" - from Treasure (1984)

Can't look out Can't look in You just might Get yourself Get right out of the doors In the light We'll make love And then we can go And we can go And we can go And we can go And we can go We're covered by the sacred fire Then you cut me to You cut me to the bone Can't look out Can't look in You just might Get yourself Get right out of the doors In the light We'll make love And then we can go And we can go And we can go And we can go And we can go

And we're covered by the sacred fire Then you cut me to You cut me to the bone Without a doubt We're covered by the sacred fire Then you cut me to You cut me to the bone Can't look in Guilty boy Guilty girl 'Cause you're both cursed Out of the doors In the light We'll make love And then we can go Can't look in Guilty boy Guilty girl 'Cause you're both cursed Out of the doors In the light We'll make love And then we can go