CocoRosie

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

Twenty-one years have passed since that fateful rendezvous in a small room in Montmartre, which resulted in the successful debut of sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady. An album, La Maison De Mon Rêve, recorded on a four-track, with a guitar, electronic samples, and a few bizarre sounds captured “in the field” among clutter, creaking chairs, and toys. It quickly became one of the most talked-about musical phenomena of the year, launching the Casady sisters as new priestesses of a “primitive” folk revival, updated with contemporary quirks and innovations drawn from trip-hop, hip-hop, glitch, avant-pop, and more.

Twenty-one years later, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge for CocoRosie: seven studio albums, marked by highs and lows, numerous soundtracks for theatrical works, and prestigious collaborations, such as with the Kronos Quartet at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. What has endured is their taste for turning sisterhood into a profound artistic dialogue, playing with styles in a constant act of sonic bricolage.

Little Death Wishes, released by Joyful Noise, brings in notable guests like Gael Rakotondrabe on piano, Greg Saunier from Deerhoof on percussion, and Chance The Rapper. Yet once again, the heart of the album lies in the feverish dialogue between Sierra (who wrote most of the lyrics) and Bianca. The twelve tracks tackle complex themes such as generational struggles faced by women, the precariousness of existence and the "little death wishes" of the title, romantic disillusionment, and that constant (and tormented) connection to childhood that has always been the duo's trademark. From childhood, CocoRosie carry a gift for innocent chaos that makes even their most disjointed and fragmented songs intriguing — like the opening track, "Wait For Me," a sort of electronic madrigal led along by Saunier’s off-kilter rhythms, mimicking a frantic, irregular heartbeat, accompanying Bianca’s childlike falsetto tremor.

The sounds — as usual, hyper-contaminated and dirtied with heavy doses of field recordings — often brush against the playful, rarefied electronics of early Björk, as in the excellent single “Cut Stitch Scar,” where the heavy, limping beat seems to evoke the scars of the title, while Bianca’s trembling voice questions how to piece together a shattered reality (“Could I fix the broken parts?”). Everything is fragmented and disconnected, as in the lopsided lullaby of “Least I Have You,” where Sierra’s voice spreads a veil of dreamy melancholy over an out-of-tune piano and grainy synth, or in the aggressive pulsing of keyboards and drum machines in “Nothing But Garbage.”

At times, the album touches on a detached hip-hop vibe ("Paper Boat," "Nothing But Garbage"), culminating in the feature by Chance The Rapper on "Girl In Town," one of the album’s strongest tracks, built on a dissonant toy piano loop and broken beats, which softly clash with Chance’s warm, melancholic flow as CocoRosie conjure up the image of a wandering female figure, caught between fairytale evocations and harsh urban reality. This dark mood returns even more intensely in “Pushing Daisies,” a piece of minimalist bedroom electronica that serves a story of intergenerational trauma and family dysfunction.

Evocative and intimate, the weird-pop of Little Death Wishes is unlikely to win Bianca and Sierra many new fans, but it confirms their skill in navigating that liminal space between fairy tale and reality, between childlike innocence and the wounds of adulthood, with a touch of controlled lo-fi serving as a thread connecting them back to their beginnings. It’s a mature, self-aware synthesis of CocoRosie's artistic journey, demonstrating the duo’s ability to explore new sonic frontiers while maintaining their signature crooked elegance and recognizable identity. Imperfect and chaotic, like all of their records — but perhaps, for that very reason, all the more intriguing.

27/04/2025