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CocoRosie: Noah's Ark
Touch & Go, 2005
Rating: 2.7
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Posted:
October 3,
2005
By
Peter Landwehr
CocoRosie's first album, La Maison De Mon Rêve, was a bizarre
little gem. The two Casady sisters warbled together over a minimalist
combination of acoustic instruments and samples of birdsong, creaking
swings, bleeps and beatboxing, and managed to create an album excellent for
late nights alone in your local equivalent of a Parisian cafe. Noah's Ark,
the duo's followup, provides more of the same, but the pair overextend
themselves often enough to appear to be posturing, costing them some of
their charm.
On "Jesus Loves Me" from La Maison De Mon Rêve, the duo offered a lo-fi
rendition of an old spiritual, including the N-word from the original,
hoping to make people think about contradictions and complements in
Christianity. This theme of making the listener find the negative in
"beautiful" things and the beautiful in the disturbing runs throughout
Noah's Ark.
Just as the cover art depicting unicorns having sex is excessive, so too is
the music. Thus "Beautiful Boyz" presents an image of prison as a gay
paradise, and the lovely jazz choruses of "Apocalypse" are matched against
ironic (yet sincerely delivered) lyrics like "And let's all say a prayer /
to Walter Disney and Mike Tyson" and "God must have been color blind / If I
made the world it would all be white".
The problem is that CocoRosie's observations aren't insightful enough to
warrant the obtuse presentation. While the bluesy duet describing a fight in
Brooklyn on "South 2nd" works well both musically and as a statement, songs
like "Bear Hides & Buffalo" wander through difficult lyrics and strange
samples as the sisters try to wax profound. Their original freak-folk was as
accessible as much of this album is puzzling.
CocoRosie can still make beautiful music, and "Noah's Ark", the lead single,
is an excellent example, differing from the rest of the album in that it is
an entirely sincere religious song that combines Billie Holiday-esque rap
with beatboxing and soprano singing better than anyone has a right to
expect. "Bisonours" and the largely instrumental "Brazillian Sun" both
recall the sisters' previous album, and demonstrate that they don't want to
spend the entire album experimenting. While the Casaday sisters have
broadened their sound (supported by guests such as Devandra Barnhardt,
Antony and French beatboxer Spleen), they've not yet mastered their expanded
palette.
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