There is a nursery rhyme like quality to CocoRosie’s music. It starts from a place of apparent simplicity and charm but underneath there are darker aspects. It would be easy to be swept along by the bricolage of sounds, a veritable junkyard of cheap keyboards and dismiss it as playground pop. Yet in reality, they have performed the magic trick of transforming an avant-garde approach into something immediately accessible. On their eighth album ‘Little Death Wishes’, sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady have penned a series of twelve songs that tell the stories of the generational hardship of women and the realities of their lives. It is quite the sucker gut punch.
Their skill in matching the apparently spontaneous with the thoughtful reflects their range of artistic endeavour. Together, they have composed original scores for four Robert Wilson theatrical pieces: Peter Pan, Pushkin’s Fairy Tales, Edda and Jungle Book. In addition, they have collaborated with the Kronos Quartet at their Jazz Festival in San Francisco for two seasons. Bianca has mounted solo exhibitions as a visual artist, created several plays as an experimental theatre director and published a poetry book. Sierra has staged an opera and has arranged and performed music globally including with the Symphony Orchestra of Amsterdam and at the ICA in London and the Sydney Opera House.
This range of interests is apparent on ‘Little Death Wishes’ which starts with ‘Wait For Me’, a comparatively restrained piece with the air of a musical tragedy, telling of the lead character’s junkyard poppy who “hit her when she acted funny / kiss her when she brought the money.” The longest track on the album at six minutes, ‘Cut Stitch Scar’ shifts between sparsity and an almost operatic electronic density with its dark nights of the soul and surrounding fires. Ultimately, it recognises the randomness of the universe, suggesting “take a leap of faith / there may not be a plan for you.”
‘Yesterday’ differs from the Beatles song of the same name in all aspects except that the lead character’s troubles are here to stay. To a backdrop of what they describe as “backyard-BBQ music” which consists of child-like chimes and emergency sirens, they rap out the snappy chorus, “she got raped / he got time / she got kids / lost her mind / she got drink / she can’t think / sloppy drunk all the time.” It is a remarkably effective piece of storytelling. The 28-second ‘Luckless’ has helium-infused spoken lead vocals backed by what sounds like Hollywood’s idea of a choir of angels.
‘Paper Boat’ begins with the accusation, “you’re as great a liar as a lover (lousy)”, plays around with autotune and has a rhythmic sense of mischief, seeing them “as happy as a harlot on a holiday.” Such playfulness contributes to making ‘Little Death Wishes’ an entertaining listen. ‘It Ain’t Easy’ falls into the subdued piano ballad category, albeit with some of their characteristically idiosyncratic observations, “I am my best friend, like dog is man / candlestick and crucifix are more my kin.”
In contrast, ‘Nothing But Garbage’ flits between their two-to-three words per line raps and some extraordinarily wonky autotuned R’n’B whilst portraying the sort of dysfunctional family that would be portrayed more sensationally in a Channel 4 documentary. A tale of sisterly support and an abused mother, ‘Least I Have You’ is bolstered by additional drums from Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier which inevitably means rhythms going off in pleasingly unexpected directions. Another guest, Chance the Rapper, adds his rhymes to ‘Girl In Town’, a more pop leaning tale of romance, though one in which the path does not run smoothly.
The slow groove of the brief ‘No Need For Money’ sees them attempting to access heaven through grief and noting that cash is unnecessary when you are dead. Death remains centre-stage on ‘Pushing Daisies’ in which “Momma’s in the graveyard… / Sister’s in the madhouse dreaming of her junkyard mommy / Baby’s in the playhouse waiting for her deadbeat daddy.” It is another demonstration of how, out of monumentally depressing material, CocoRosie can create something irresistible through their beats and insistent chants. ‘Little Death Wishes’ ends with ‘Unbroken’ which is not, as the title might suggest, a tale of unvarnished resilience. To piano backing, it has Casady imagining “I was never really broken / Death might be / The only way home.” It completes an album of varying sounds and moods, one full of cognitive dissonance that can simultaneously seem silly and deep but hits emotionally hard.
CocoRosie: Little Death Wishes – Out 28 March 2025 (Joyful Noise)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
