Echoes in a Shallow Bay

by

Cocteau Twins

Edit

Echoes in a Shallow Bay is an EP by the Scottish rock group Cocteau Twins, released on 4AD. The EP features four non-album tracks. It was issued on 29 November 1985 two weeks after another EP entitled Tiny Dynamine. The EP was also re-issued in 1991 as part of The Box Set and in 2005 as part of the singles/EP collection Lullabies to Violaine.

The band did not originally intend to release these songs to the general public, presumably explaining the decision to release the material on EPs, rather than as what would have been their fourth album. The tracks on Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay were initially recorded to test the production capacities of a new studio. When the band decided the material was strong enough for release, they completed the recording process and issued the finished product on two EPs.

"Pale Clouded White" has been performed live. A remastered version of the song appears on the 2000 compilation Stars and Topsoil.

With Fraser's typically indecipherable lyrics it is difficult to be sure, but all the titles on the two EPs seem to have some link with Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). The Great Spangled Fritillary is a butterfly and while there is no Pale Clouded White there is a Pale Clouded Yellow (as well as a group of butterflies known as whites), while Mellonella is the specific name of the Wax Moth Galleria mellonella. The lyrics of this track consist of Fraser reciting the scientific names of the families of British moths. Lepidoptera eggs do not have shells though.