CocoRosie Profiled In NY Times Magazine

Enjoy Sunday's full feature here.

CR recently spoke out about their controversial new single.

Visit CocoRosie on MySpace.

MP3: CocoRosie - Madonna

CocoRosie Speaks Out On Controversial New Single

The ladies share the following with Spinner regarding 'God Has A Voice, She Speaks Through Me': *"The basic subject that has been really heavy on our minds recently has been patriarchy. As old of an issue as that might be, we've hit a new wave of it. Being at the beach in France and seeing women in the water completely covered head to toe in burkas with all their husbands in Speedos, it hit me in such an intense way. It is political for sure, but the message is, at least coming from us, the opening to a discussion. People have a lot of opinions on the subject because people are really uncomfortable addressing it. It's almost like we're not allowed to talk about it. It becomes a cultural issue instead of a women's issue. For us, we're approaching it more as a women's issue. I've been so personally offended by it, in a way, that I'm ready to at least talk about it. I'm not forcing any statements down anybody's throats. It's just opening up some dialog which is all we can ever hope to do."*

Watch the video for 'God...' here.

MP3: CocoRosie - Madonna

CocoRosie Debuts New Video

Enjoy their latest effort entitled 'God Has A Voice, She Speaks Through Me' below.


MP3: CocoRosie - The Sea Is Calm

CocoRosie Performs With Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Check out their take on 'Good Friday' for Queen's Day Eve (in Amsterdam) below.


MP3: CocoRosie - Terrible Angels

CocoRosie Covers Britney Spears

Watch the sisters tackle 'Oops! I Did It Again' in the clip below. Visit CR on MySpace.


MP3: CocoRosie - Madonna

CocoRosie Visits Danish TV

Here's 'Werewolf', as performed on DR2. Head to the station's official site here.

MP3: CocoRosie - Terrible Angels

CocoRosie Brings 'Werewolf' To French TV

Gotta love the make-up and seemingly random outfits. Oh yes, and the flawless performance. Does anybody else think CR is starting to sound a little Cibo Matto-esque?


MP3: CocoRosie - Madonna

CocoRosie Playing Surprise NYC Gig Tonight

The band gives full deets in their recent MySpace bulletin: *so we are playing a free show to the people of the ny area at a gallery called deitch on 18 wooster st. tonight. let's get lifted in the staircase. rainbow smoke and rainbow light.

we go on at 9pm
i think thats it
then we off to the old eu again
love and everything trans to you and yours

Vicky (coco) bone Slim*

MP3: CocoRosie - Honey Or Tar

CocoRosie's Bianca Performs Solo For Arena Grande

Check out one half of CocoRosie tackling an acoustic version of 'Animals' below. Learn more about Arena Grande and view more CocoRosie live clips here. Read my review of The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn via this link. Noah's Ark-era MP3 at bottom.

MP3: CocoRosie - The Sea Is Calm

CocoRosie Discusses Sibling Rivalry, Future Plans

Watch the interview with CocoRosie's Bianca Casady below, as conducted by Sammy Jankis (from Gothenburg's Top 10) at The Way Out Festival this summer. The Q&A is immediately followed by the clip to 'Rainbowarriors'. BV has info on upcoming CocoRosie tour dates.

MP3: CocoRosie - Rainbowarriors

Patrick Wolf & Spleen Join CocoRosie For BBC

Check out the clip below, dating back to this March, in which Spleen, Patrick Wolf & CocoRosie collaborate on a stunning rendition of the latter's single, 'Beautiful Boyz'. For those curious, the performance was held at London's Koko for an official BBC recording. Better than the recorded version featuring Antony? You decide. Both MP3s at bottom. Check out my review of CocoRosie's recent gig at NYC's World Financial Plaza here.


MP3s: 'Beautiful Boyz' (live w/ P. Wolf + Spleen) + 'Beautiful Boyz (w/ Antony)

The World Of B-Sides & Rarities, #61

CocoRosie - Turn Me On

For anybody who's seen CocoRosie over the last two years, you're probably somewhat familiar with 'Turn Me On', even if you didn't know the dancehall/R&B favorite when it was released in its original form back in 2004.

The Kevin Lyttle tune reached Billboard's US Top 5 singles three summers ago, as well as climbing up into the upper echelons of nearly every other international chart shortly thereafter. CocoRosie's take on the track is sung by the high-pitched Bianca and performed by sister, Sierra, making for a mesmerizing combination.

Listen to the dazzling, albeit random, cover below.

MP3: CocoRosie - Turn Me On (Kevin Lyttle cover)

CocoRosie @ World Financial Plaza: Tiny Waves Of Shivers

Freak folk and urban poetry's worlds collided last night at the World Financial Plaza's Wintergarden. The always delightful duo, CocoRosie, joined forces with Urban Word NYC, a non-profit that provides free writing and performance opportunities to teens all across NYC.

As the story goes, CocoRosie's Bianca Cassidy was a member of Urban Word NYC some years ago, and has been trying to arrange an event like this since her departure. The result was an awe-inspiring, passionate and surreal 80-minute collaboration.

The teens' verses ranged in topic from body dysmorphia to racism, street life to sexuality confusion. The night opened with the kids reciting the lyrics to CocoRosie's 'South 2nd' while parading through the perimeter of the space, eventually meeting in front of the stage just in time for CocoRosie to immediately break into the tune in its original form.

As the evening progressed, the ratio for music to words was roughly 2 or 3 CocoRosie tunes for every poetic delivery. CocoRosie focused almost exclusively on their last two releases, Noah's Ark and this year's The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn (read my review of that album here). The band opened with the aforementioned 'South 2nd' and closed with a rousing rendition of (one of my favorite CocoRosie tracks) 'Werewolf'.

The gathering served as the culminating activity for Word Of Mouth: 'a multi-disciplinary festival which explores intersection where language and performance meet'. More info on Word Of Mouth can be found here on WFC's site. I'll surely be attending again for its next go-round.



Check out CocoRosie's tunes, tour dates and blog entries here on their MySpace page.

Learn more about Urban Word NYC here on the organization's official site.

MP3s: CocoRosie - Werewolf + CocoRosie - South 2nd

CocoRosie Arrested, Cancel Gigs!

Via MySpace bulletin:

"dear loves

we are so sorry to announce that we cannot play the rest of the us tour dates
the band got arrested, thats all i can say
we love you all
we are playing a free show in New York on may 19th
please come if you can
we are crying
say a prayer for our band
love
Sierra and Bianca
later..."

Yikes!

MP3: CocoRosie - Milk

Review: CocoRosie - The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn

CocoRosie is not a band most folks can instantly fall in love with. Their sound is pointedly original yet begs you to question their work and further analyze the band's motives.

Luckily, I've seen CocoRosie three times (all opening for Antony & The Johnsons) and have not only gotten accustomed to their 'neo-freak-folk-ish' sound, I've fallen sucker for everything that sisters Bianca & Sierra put on record. Their third full-length, The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn, gets its proper release next month and it's surely their most accessible album to date, as well as their most diverse.

The core of CocoRosie's music revolves around Sierra's operatically trained vocals and Bianca's high-pitched Bjork-esque squawking. In addition to the unique vocal stylings, the band's instrumentation includes harp-centered songs to random noises created from children's handheld games (a la Fisher Price's educational toys) to beatboxing and even simply, the piano. On Adventures, the ladies mix it up a bit. Probably the most noticable difference would be the sense of melody throughout the album. Bianca's rapping takes on an entirely new form on Adventures, while Sierra's voice has never sounded stronger. The merging of the two completely draws you into CocoRosie's world.

On the album's stongest tracks, 'Rainwbowarriors', 'Japan' and 'Werewolf', the duo really shines their brightest. Lyrically and musically, alike, these are easily the band's best songs to date. CocoRosie will be touring all over the US this spring, check out those tour dates over at their MySpace page.

MP3: CocoRosie - Japan

CocoRosie Get Adventurous In April

In simpler terms, CocoRosie's new LP, The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn, will be on shelves and in iPods April 10th! Yay!

For those who read the site regulary, you know that CocoRosie went from one of my least favorite acts to a group I have extreme admiration for, and cannot wait to see live again. Here's my (verbose) review of their last Brooklyn show at The Warsaw with Antony & Matmos, late last year.

Prefix Mag alerts us to the press release and tracklist:

Birthed through an intricate process of prank phone calls and clairvoyant documentation, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn follows CocoRosie and their crew of miscreants through the Mechanical Forest of Feelings. This album is a departure from the obscured blur of stained glass rêve to a more self-exploitive memoir. Parts are dreamy and parts are savage, but, as with an opera where death represents a secret heaven, the whole record feels like a black diamond in the snow.

Tracklist for The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn: Rainbowarriors/Promise/Bloody Twins/Japan/Sunshine/Black Poppies/Werewolf/Animals/Houses/Raphael/Girl And The Geese/Miracle

MP3: CocoRosie - Noah's Ark (title track to their last album)

Antony, CocoRosie & Matmos @ Warsaw: We Are Family!

I know you want to sing the next line of the song so go ahead...

Ok, now to the review.

I was completely misled thanks to the billing of last night's show! The Ali Forney Benefit show was billed as an Antony show with CocoRosie and Matmos as support. I was a little confused when CocoRosie graced the stage first around 8pm, as introduced by Murray Hill (great job by the way!), but didn't mind. Then Antony came on next, followed by Matmos. Odd if you ask me since Antony is by far the most successful talent on that bill, but on second thought since Antony curated the whole event, perhaps he felt weird headlining it as well. The Matmos guys came all the way from San Fran for the show! Perhaps they deserved the coveted spot of closing out the gig for that reason alone; I just wish 75% of the crowd didn't saunter out as soon as Antony sung his last note!

CocoRosie was in fine form last night. I've now seen the band 3 times and have gone from being totally disgusted by their stage presence and song structure, to absolutely adoring it. Last night only deepened my love for the sisters that make up the band. They played a good deal from Noah's Ark including 'K-Hole', but by far the highlight was 'Beautiful Boyz'. Antony joined them on stage for the ditty and it was flawless. I wished they did an extended version of the song because it was totally dead on last night. The ladies received much praise from the crowd which seemed just as excited to see them, as they were to see Antony.


Around 9:30 or so, Antony took the stage. Antony was in really good spirits last night. He joked about how embarassing he was on stage, how he longed for a dead drummer from the early '70s, and how he can turn any song into a melancholic one. The CocoRosie girls joined him on stage for the witty and hysterically funny new tune "Bouncy Balls". The entire set was perfect. Here's the setlist, the asterisks denote a new song:

My Lady Story
Cripple + The Starfish
*Kiss My Name
Spiralling
For Today I Am A Boy
*Bouncy Balls
*One Dove
I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy
Fistful Of Love
Hope There's Someone

Matmos hopped on stage somewhere around 11pm. Sadly as I mentioned earlier, much of the crowd had dissipated by the time the boys got ready for their shtick. They opened their set with one member literally blowing air through a straw and into a small bowl filled with water (as seen in the photograph below). After about 5 minutes of that, he threw in a packet of Alka Seltzer which made a throbbing sound, as you can imagine, and although it was a little cacophonous it was also pretty damn cool.


Pretty soon after this, Antony graced the stage yet again for 2 tracks with Matmos. This is when I got closest to the stage and snapped away.






Can't wait for their next benefit show! Hopefully Antony will curate it again.