Garlands is the only album the band recorded with original bassist Will Heggie. Cindy Sharp of Cindytalk provided backup vocals on "Dear Heart", "Hearsay Please", and "Hazel". Billboard described the album as "dark post-punk". The album's sound was described in The Rough Guide to Rock as "a blend of ominous pulsating bass, stark TR808 drums, cyclical guitar and great screeching arcs of reverberating feedback, over which Liz alternated dry, brittle utterings with full-power vocal gymnastics".
Release
The original British cassette release included four additional tracks from a John Peel radio session. The original British, Brazilian and Canadian CD releases featured the album, the Peel session and two other tracks that were recorded for an unreleased single, which was to have been the band's first release. The four Peel Session recordings were later released as BBC Sessions in 1999. A remastered version of "Blind Dumb Deaf" was included on the 2000 compilation Stars and Topsoil, a version of "Hazel" appeared on the band's Peppermint Pig EP, released in 1983, and a remixed version of "Wax and Wane" was included on the 1985 compilation The Pink Opaque.
Reception
Sounds critic Helen Fitzgerald wrote, "The fact of the matter is that the album is bloody good. A fluid frieze of wispy images made all the more haunting by Elizabeth's distilled vocal maturity, fluctuating from a brittle fragility to a voluble dexterity with full range and power". Cocteau Twins' roadie Collin Wallace recalled, "Garlands was written off in the UK as another Siouxsie copy band, and Elizabeth Fraser|Elisabeth was a huge Siouxsie fan. She had huge Siouxsie tattoos which she's had lasered off since". Spin wrote that the album " like Siouxsie and the Banshees with echo". The Arts Desk shared the same view: "Though they had their own voice, the debut’s debt to Siouxsie & the Banshees was apparent". In its review of the album, AllMusic was generally critical, writing that "Garlands falters due to something the band generally avoided in the future – overt repetition. As a debut effort, though, Garlands makes its own curious mark, preparing the band for greater heights".
