Friday, May 18, 2007


Coco Rosie – The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn (Touch And Go).

Coco Rosie, sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, release their third album on Touch & Go and build on the critical acclaim of their previous two. Opening with Rainbowarriors, an ethereal folktronica with spirits in the background, they take the listener on a journey that is sometimes unsettling but never mediocre. The vocal is childlike and there is lots going on. Promise is unique and the childlike vocal continues but the content is certainly not juvenile. Bloody Twins opens with bells and chimes. Images of witches abound on this very short offering. The strange but charming Japan follows and leads us into the most mainstream song so far, Sunshine. This is gentle, sleepy and hypnotic and is already a mainstay of their live set. Black Poppies contains more of their gentle, sparse tones and confirms their status as officially strange. The childs voice on this is spooky.

Werewolf will take you to very dark places and Animals makes it difficult to categorise them and identify who their fan base will be. There is a slow barrelhouse piano background to the funereal Houses and they continue their fascination with one word titles on Raphael. A word of warning; don’t be taken in by their innocent vocals, these songs are razor sharp. I don’t see the point of the extremely short Girl And The Geese but they make up for it with the 11 minute epic that is the closing track, Miracle. This is hard going, as are some of the others, but they don’t profess to be for the mass market. There is a long, unnecessary patch of silence before the track ends with train and animal noises heralding in acoustic guitar and voice.

Coco Rosie can take you from folk to hip-hop and beyond – you never know what is around the corner. Strange, an acquired taste, yet most compelling.

http://www.cocorosie.com/
http://www.tgrec.com/

David Blue.

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