I went to the Cocorosie show at the Vogue more or less knowing what I was going to write. Or
at least I thought I did. It went something like “If you double cloned Bjork, threw in six hits of LSD and a sordid family history, the result would very likely be something like Cocorosie …”
Well, such platitudes hardly does the prismatic “freak folk” ensemble justice. It was more like
two cosmic goddesses of a futuristic musical religion descended on the earthly plane for a night to enlighten us Vancouverites with their spellbinding sonority. Sisters Sierra and Bianca Cassidy bounced around seamlessly from ethereal vocals to a dazzling array of instruments with Sierra migrating from harp to keyboard and Bianca grabbing any number of bizarre-looking wind instruments from a Naked Lunchian tickle trunk, while their accompanying beatboxer (who’s a C.R. Avery-esque one-man-band—his one solo song lit the whole audience on fire), synth player, and bassist kept up admirably.
The band made a point of ping-ponging back and forth between fan favourites like “Rainbow
Warriors,” “Promise,” “Animals” and a smattering of more recent tunes like “Coconuts,” most of which seem to abandon the sisters’ trademark spectral creepiness for a lighter mode of sisterly frolicking. But what all of their corpus has in common is an all-too-rare hybrid virtuosity that seems to mix and match diverse elements from a dazzling panorama of traditions, from bebop tempos to hip-hop beats to operatic mezzo soprano vocals, all held together by an uncanny sisterly bond full of strange intensities that none of us could ever hope to understand, though you’ll get brief glimpses here and there if you go their next show.
