By Alice Beecher
Photo by Alexander Bianchi.
“If Cher were an indie band, she would be CocoRosie” so says one audience member of the hypnotic, operatic, and beautifully surreal CocoRosie show at the ‘Sco this Saturday. Fans came pouring into the slightly overcrowded venue with tribal face paint and outfits weird and sparkly enough to merit their share of second glances, even by Oberlin standards. They were well prepared—a CocoRosie show is as much a visual experience as it is a musical phenomenon.
The band didn’t get started until 11 p.m., to the chagrin of some inpatient concertgoers. They opened with a song that involved both beat-boxing and opera singing, which set the stage for the rest of the night. Projected on a video screen in the background were images of carnival swings and budding flowers, later offset by eerie scenes of fire and severed eyes. Every once in a while, the mood of the images would switch, shaping the emotional impact of each song and leaving the audience as nostalgic as they were disturbed. The entire concert conjured up an atmosphere of youthful memories made strange and incomprehensible by the onslaught of adulthood. Sierra (Rosie) sang in a precious, girlish tremor balanced by propulsive hip-hop beats and gritty lyrics about being “candied from the inside.”
The crowd embraced the ghostly carnival atmosphere by dancing like gypsies or staring transfixed at Coco’s emphatic performance. The energy picked up when a Bowie-esque beat boxer started soloing, somehow layering percussive rhythms under choral like singing as impressive as Coco’s own soaring high notes. His performance highlighted the complexity of CocoRosie’s sound—at once primeval and modern, like a fairy kingdom transmuted to the modern age. Many of the songs followed a similar structure, but the passion and visual impact of the band kept the show from getting boring.
Their best performance was in the song ‘Animals,” in which Coco repeated the refrain, “I would spend a lot of time alone / I should be among the animals,” as if by returning to a primitive state she could be as free and wild as she desired. The beauty of the melody was balanced by the genres that define CocoRosie—a mix of everything from electro pop to eastern music to hip hop to opera.
Although the sisters did not come together to make music until later in their lives, their shared childhood undoubtedly affected their current artistic personalities. Told to drop out of high school by a mother who believed the pursuit of art would teach them more than school ever could, the girls started experimenting with their art and sound early on. Their common influences and experiences, including moving around the country throughout their childhoods and being exposed to their father’s interest in Native American spiritualism, both affect their music and bond them as performers. At one point, the two started playing a handclapping game—a reminder of their ties as sisters and their shared history.
CocoRosie are also famous in the fashion world for their eccentric style and gender-neutral outfits—in many music videos they dress up as men or soldiers. At the ‘Sco, they stayed feminine, wearing long diaphanous veils and multicolored face paint. However, one of the most memorable images projected during the concert was a picture of Bianca’s mustachioed face lying down as a caterpillar crawled over her skin. I’m not sure what the deeper meaning behind this was, though it elicited a visceral reaction from the audience. But it is this mixture of the disturbing and the playful that defines CocoRosie as artistic pioneers. They make music that pushes boundaries while still making us wistful for our own childhoods, a duality as thought provoking as it is beautiful.
