The sisters Casady, from left: Bianca and Sierra
Gillard, Julia
CocoRosie
Issue #31
Mix spooky effects with beatboxing you get the sister duo’s adventurous fourth album
By Cortney Harding
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
As they giggle and whisper in the back of a dim Williamsburg café, it seems hard to believe that sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady were ever anything but the best of friends. But it was only a few years ago that the pair was completely estranged, their 10-year silence ended when Bianca showed up on her sister’s doorstep in Paris and, as Sierra puts it, “snagged her skirt.” Since the unexpected arrival, the sisters have been making music as CocoRosie, and are about to release their fourth album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, on Touch and Go Records.
“The new record sounds like a desert zoo rave,” says the dark-haired, ethereal Sierra. Blonde-mulleted, multiply tattooed Bianca chimes in, “Yeah, it’s a nocturnal zoo rave.” In real life, this description translates to a mix of Diamanda Galas and Joanna Newsom, with some beatboxing thrown in for good measure. “The writing process is pretty difficult to remember,” says Bianca. “It involved a lot of late nights. We were going for a more old feeling, mixing modern, dance elements with old, spooky themes.”
A focus on the old and spooky makes sense for the sisters, given their pre-CocoRosie aspirations. “I wanted to be a shepherdess,” says Sierra, while Bianca spent her time in Paris writing and teaching. When they’re not making music, they spend their time “doing weird things together and making potions.” They also head up Voodoo-EROS, which is home to Bunny Rabbit and Metallic Falcons, and which Bianca describes as a “spiritual baseball team.” She further explains, “Voodoo-EROS is more of a home base for us. I’m driven as a curator to get two different types of
artists from contradicting genres working inside the same context. I’m working on an exhibition right now that will combine performance and music. Previously, we set up in a storefront with a hairdresser and a psychic and offered ‘haircuts
and healing.’”
“My goal is to constantly redefine my work,” continues Bianca. “With CocoRosie, we’re always changing who performs with us. We have a new beatboxer coming on our next tour, and we have an amazing French pianist playing some upcoming shows as well. We’ve also recorded a project called the Triplets of Jupiter with Antony [of Antony and the Johnsons] that sounds like a stripped-down version of the Supremes.”
With so much creative energy flowing out of two young women, it seemed only a matter of time before heavy-hitters would take notice. CocoRosie was recently tapped by David Byrne to appear at Carnegie Hall as part of a series of new artists that the former Talking Heads lead singer is curating. Bianca also recently attracted some negative attention when she was quoted in a controversial Washington Post piece about the “Kill Whitey” dance parties in Williamsburg. “The authors described me as a different person,” she says. “I think it was all part of a plot to create racial tension in the progressive community. People on the Web got really upset about it, but the attention seems to have faded.”
With that controversy behind them, CocoRosie are gearing up for a spring tour that will take them across the states and the globe. Despite their tight touring schedule, Sierra says, “We try not to look ahead too much and just focus on the present. It’s better for me to keep things blurry and just be part of a big, oblivious picture.”
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