CocoRosie – Tales of the Grass Widow

The two highly talented sisters Sierra and Bianca Cassidy, better known as COCOROSIE, present their new longplayer. As always this invites you into a very own magical microcosm.
Tales Of The Grass Widow is full of metaphoric symbolism, experimental instruments and the infinitely inspiring interaction of this two awesome artists. In the last ten years since their debut La maison de mon rêve they released more music, they played a lot of concerts, directed plays and operas, had exhibitions and hosted different events from poetry readings to fashion shows. COCOROSIE’s musical work can be regarded as an multidisciplinary way to cross sound, lyric and performance. It swings between poetry and theatre, it contains the elements of chamber music as well as pop song structures, its multifaceted without being overloaded.

For an album like Tales Of The Grass Widow, those meaningless genre names like anti folk or world music become totally useless and can’t describe this fireworks of influences and styles, including reggae, a lot of hip hop, oriental sounds and a pinch of folk.
But those musical elements only build a figural framework for a deeper and more delicately content. Between these eleven unagitated and self evident songs, COCOROSIE place different topics which boldly construct a bridge between issues like the treatment of children and the destruction of mother earth. The album introduces a lot of fabulous characters and also brings back some from older work of the two sisters. The Gravediggres (also the main character in the same titled song) and the figure of an abandoned child are already known from a play which was staged last year. Once these characters are born, they become attendants, they rise and they develop until they find their place and tell their story in a song, COCOROSIE said about their appearance. Long time friend collaborator ANTONY HEGARTY is once again part of this detailed drawn world full of diversity. Fans of both artists should have in mind their common song Beautiful Boyz from the album Noah’s Ark which already featured him. On Tales Of The Grass Widow he lents his face to the personated mother nature in the song Tears for Animals and again on the album closer Poison.

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Next to this deep and intimate story telling and the varying way of using words and voices, every song gets its special mood through an eclectic soundscape. COCOROSIE describe Tales Of The Grass Widow as a dance album. Even if we can’t agree with this completely, there are some danceable moments but mostly it’s a very dreamy and playful record. Broken Chariot is a mysterious and highly beautiful piece of music including whispering voices, flutes and a scarely audible xylophone. Harmless Monster starts as an piano driven ballad, tells about the “Harmless Monster with flowers in their hair” until it gets shaked up by a craggy hip hop drum roll. Far Away is also build on samples of weird sounds from children’s toys and beatboxing loops which appears again and again on the whole album. Finally some happy hardcore vibes meets a child’s musical clock in the hidden track, which is an arousing and therefore perfect end for such a record. With their fifth album, Sierra and Bianca Cassidy again created a little masterpiece, that combines beautiful songwriting with sweet sounds and interesting issues.

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COCOROSIE