CocoRosie, Sleep Whale
Granada Theater
September 29, 2010
Better than: listening to recorded CocoRosie. Far better, actually.
The sisters Bianca and Sierra (CoCo and Rosie, respectively) Casady and their sidemen brought their unique brand of freaky fairy music to the Granada last night.
Playing to an enthusiastic crowd of around 600, some of which were extravagantly
costumed, the six-piece touring band delivered a very satisfying
performance. Sierra was center stage with a harp and
harmonium and toys, and Bianca was stage right with a table full of
various noisemakers--electronics, a penny whistle and a recorder.
You expect a CoCoRosie show to be a feast for the eyes and ears, and
they did not disappoint. A backdrop of crazy images and nature scenes
looped through the night, and, while the girls were not as heavily
costumed as they are in their videos and album covers, they made for a
striking presence.
The set started with "R.I.P. Burnface" from latest
release Grey Oceans, and turned into a kinetic night of Sierra breaking
into a spinning dance, and the overall tone of the music (all recreated
on stage) being much more happy and alive than it seems on record.
The set drew heavily from Grey Oceans, but touched on highlights of
their entire catalog, with favorites like "Werewolf" and "God Has A Voice
She Speaks Through Me." Four songs into the set, a vocalist named Yasmine joined the band
and added Arabic vocal stylings to "The Moon Asked The Crow." Regardless, though, the first
half of the evening really belonged to operatic voice of Sierra.
Half-way through, however, the band left the stage along to a beatboxer named Tez, who did a short
but extremely entertaining set. The girls then came back in fresh
little girl costumes and kicked off a high-spirited second half of the
show with a clapping-game song "Hopscotch." Thus began a set that
belonged a bit more to Bianca, and included the autotuned Bianca singing
Kevin Lyttle's "Turn Me On," followed by the first-released single off
Grey Oceans, "Lemonade."
The band was called back by an audience they owned for a two-song encore
(again with Yasmine), and, finally, the evening came to a close about 90 minutes
after it had started.
Opening for CoCoRosie was Sleep Whale (formerly Mom) of Denton, who
delivered a more electronic sample set than I have seen from them in the
past, but also with a fun visual backdrop of eight-bit graphics.
An odd musical highlights of the night was between sets, when a
Backstreet Boys hit, "I Want It That Way" was played in chopped-and-screwed style. In a night of weird sounds and visuals, the image this one conjured may have been the weirdest. One tends not to imagine the Backstreet Boys sippin' on syrup.
Critics Notebook
Personal Bias: I really appreciate it when bands are able to recreate
their music live, and the sisters and their band did a great job of it. The big acoustic piano was a great and appropriate touch.
By The Way: I own more than one CocoRosie album, so I would say I'm a
casual fan. But I was unprepared for how energized and engaging their
set was, compared to my expectation of dramatic eccentricity.
