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Gender benders

The Casady sisters put a playful spin on their haunted past
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
July 11th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Parisians CocoRosie brings the lo-fi sound of The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn to Divadlo Archa July 12.
CocoRosie

When: Thursday, July 12, at 8
Where: Divadlo Archa
Tickets: 490 Kč in advance through Ticketpro, Ticketportal and at the venue,
590 Kč at the door

The story of the two Casady sisters — separated as children in the 1990s by the interstate-wandering ways of their colorful parents, only to reunite a decade later as young adults in Paris and launch a music career together — reads like the plot of a 21st-century fairy tale. Since that magical moment, Sierra Rose and Bianca Leilani have been transforming their complex past into lo-fi splendor.
As founders of CocoRosie (the name comes from their mother’s nicknames for them), they forge the sort of playful musical epiphanies that only two long-separated sisters could mold. With lyrics often as haunting as Jim Morrison’s and nearly as blissful as Björk’s, their first two CDs — La Maison de Mon Reve (2004) and Noah’s Ark (2005), both on the Touch & Go label — demonstrate their knack for nestling sharp points in an initially deceptive veneer of naiveté.
The prosaic title of their latest CD, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn (2007), is a good case in point. Like their previous recordings, it offers a joyful lo-fi approach with dashes of opera and blues to shake up the salad. To add to the surrealism between child like melodies, CocoRosie can launch into a bitter incantation that echoes the wax cylinder recordings of Bessie Smith.
Of their attraction to the women who pioneered the blues, Bianca says, “I [am intrigued] by their outright proclamations of love to a man who beats and cheats and drinks and sleeps.”
Girlish eros shimmers throughout their work, but between the light choruses the verses can turn psychological in a snap. A good example is the song “Werewolf,” which deals with the demons of partially fathered, toxically fathered or non fathered persons. The drive to sing about such subject matter, Bianca says, “was innate, a must. It’s also about boyfriends and brothers and the pain that we have experienced with all of the above.”
But like the blues, sunlight eventually pours into CocoRosie’s music. “There is a lot of healing going on, a brief lament and then a transformation,” Bianca says.
After making their initial recordings in the bathroom of Sierra’s apartment in Paris, the sisters set up shop in Brooklyn, where they became part of a network of artists and musicians who play what’s known as “psych folk” or “freak folk.” “For many years I collaborated with Black Cracker, recent producer of Bunny Rabbit,” Bianca says. “We had many gatherings of artists at our loft from 1999–2001, and then I worked with an artist, Matteah Baim, who later collaborated with Sierra to form the Metallic Falcons. Over the bridge is The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, one of the best artists of this century or any century. And, of course, our dear Antony [of Antony & the Johnsons]. So it’s not really a Brooklyn thing after all, and not such a folk thing, either.”
The sisters are back in Paris now, where, Bianca says, “we like to be locked away from everything Parisian other than the rich traces of North Africa.” Even though that bathroom where they recorded their first two CDs had a singular acoustic, for their 2007 recording sessions they relocated to a farm in the south of France, where they found the surroundings inspirational. “It was special in many ways indeed,” Bianca says. “Dying horses and the ghosts of bloody [stillborn] twins took over at one point. The sadness of flowers was everywhere.”  
With their floating mystique, CocoRosie may be hard to nail down. But if you like lo-fi, or your ears are just yearning for something new, their upcoming Archa performance should offer plenty of fun and surprises.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (11/07/2007):

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