Touch & Go
CocoRosie : La Maison de mon rêve (US,2004)****
CocoRosie’s music is supposed to have been written by a duo of sisters in a flat, perhaps in the bath of a small hotel in Paris. Perhaps this is not true, but with this in mind, you get the right theatrical picture.
With the use of sometimes oddly combined vocals, like on the first track, “Terrible Angels” with funny semi-naive guitar pickings, and some toy electronic child-games sounds, in that track I’m reminded of a female version of Devendra Banhart, only this is well recorded. But the music-sisters have many more variations to express. “One-to-tree” tracks are variations on electronica pop, on “By your side”(or here) this is well mixed in multi-layers -with background voices and arrangements through an electronic filter-, combined with a front voice & electronic bird sounds, as perfect Madonna-music for housewives who prefers to do at least now something which doesn’t make sense in the kitchen. “Hatian Love Songs” with funny “wawawo” this-voice-is-an-amplified-instrument effects, is great electronica pop, serious or not, still a perfect alternative to a boring television day, in a something-Unimportant-is-wrong-blues style. Actually, this earlier mentioned “Madonna” here is not the same Madonna as before Madonna or during Madonna, but in this world you also have something with charm-for-god-sake. Outside blues, the cynical semi-(reverse) tradition “Jesus love’s me” gets a kitchen-sink-negro-gospel-old-woman-in-a-small-child-blues voice. On the edge of humour and theatre we get plenty of variation. We have charming and perhaps romantic girls-sing-with-girls emotions on “Good Friday” (or here). “The Tahiti Rain” song starts on a toy-like radio, with a high pitched voice. There I get a surreal impression of mars-women living in radio’s ! Then there comes noise from kitchen sink : “help, someone’s climbing up, rhythmically !!” Then the harp melodies come back, in a clarified way, with toy like car-goes-to-Mars-game sounds, and sweet operatic “wie wie” singing, in “Candyland”. Also in the song before we heard the enjoyable combination of harp with toy-like rhythms and noises, and with even more “wiwie” and “wowoow” background singing, on “Not for sale”. Around this time, the musical twin-like sisters during “Bitterscotch” combine their voices in an over-charming sweet-oh-sweet singing, while an acoustic guitar meanders and walks around the song melodies, with plastic cup rhythmic nonsense, and cock-a-doddle-doo toy sounds. Maybe I recognized some background sounds from “Mr.Snoozleberg”, a funny on-line game I played a couple of times, some time, but perhaps it’s just that kind of association which is accurate enough, for getting that piece-behind-the-computer-desk into real life’s events. Only the last song “Lyla”, which ends the cycle with a slightly sad theatrical song, we realise this expression of an alternative world was still one dream away from reality.
