Untitled Document
Are Bianca and Sierra Casady the geniuses that their
admirers (John Darnielle, David Byrne, countless blognerds) say they are,
or are they simply the newest naked emperors to hypnotize the hipster
elite? Artless prodigies or practiced flimflammers? Idiots savants or plain
old idiots? These questions are not rhetorical. I honestly can’t
decide whether the sisters Casady, known collectively as CocoRosie, have
pulled off the great indie-rock swindle or they’re the kind of artistes-with-an-e whom
everyone pretends to love until, decades later, everyone actually does.
Whatever the case, the Casadys have no real reason to
clear up the confusion. Nothing fascinates the chattering classes like a
couple of androgynous expats who may or may not know how to play their
instruments. With their painted-on mustaches and faux-naïf hugger-mugger,
their lo-fi bricolage and highbrow juxtapositions, they vacillate between
being intensely annoying and perversely appealing. They enthuse about
fairies and dress up as Native Americans. They shuttle between homes in
Brooklyn and Paris, between studios in Iceland and the south of France. One
of them, Sierra, is a classically trained opera singer; the other, Bianca,
sounds like the hip-hop-infatuated offspring of a badly constipated
Björk and a libidinous Shirley Temple. Their music is a
technoprimitive grab-bag of rudimentary beats, a few synth or piano chords,
lots of literal bells and whistles, and weird loops (including, but not
limited to, a whinnying pony, a coin spinning on a countertop, and a
creaking door). Hip-hop, of course, is rife with freaky samples, but the
difference between, say, Timbaland and CocoRosie is that the former uses
such effects as a condiment and the latter turns them into a meal.
Unfortunately, what was a novelty three years ago may
be hardening into kitsch. The Adventures of
Ghosthorse and Stillborn, the duo’s
third album, is neglibly more polished than previous efforts, its
production values a bit less rinky-dink, its instrumentation somewhat more
refined. But the cutesy quotient, alas, is still in overdrive. Underneath
all the psychosexual posturing, the surface grime, and the requisite
infusions of irony (let’s hope it’s irony, anyway), Ghosthorse is the sonic
equivalent of a warehouse full of Precious Moments figurines. There’s
a fine line between childlike and childish, but who besides a total perv
wants to see a couple of grown women toeing it? (Confidential to Bianca:
You’re 25 years old now, and the little-deaf-girl singsong shtick is
getting icky.)
To paraphrase the nursery-school rhyme, when CocoRosie
is good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad, it’s horrid.
The opening track, the hideously titled “Rainbowarriors,” comes
off like something a teenage pagan might intone over a vegan potluck:
“We gathered in a circle, stood round the rainbow fire/Burning
embers, hearts united, we remember mystical beauty.” The cringes
continue apace with the infantile reggae jam “Japan,” which
features Bianca’s regrettable attempt to imitate Jamaican patois, a
seriously stupid rape analogy, and what are surely the all-time suckiest
rhymes about Iraq (concluding with the howler “peanut-butter jelly
and other snacks”). Yet “Japan” also contains a
ridiculously lovely operatic interlude from Sierra, which almost, but not
quite, atones for the aforementioned crimes. “Houses,” on the
other hand, a denuded piano-blues-cum-Impressionist art song, is nothing
short of mesmerizing; when Sierra’s startling mezzo-soprano takes
over and the piano darkens and swells, damned if CocoRosie doesn’t
pull off a passable Fauré. Ghosthorse goes back and forth like that, the ridiculous ramming into
the sublime, for 40 frustrating minutes. Almost perfectly pitched between
awful and awesome, the CD has a binary energy that saves it from mediocrity
but can’t quite propel it into excellence.
Contact René Spencer Saller at rssaller@core.com.
Contact René Spencer Saller at rssaller@core.com.
