I didn’t know much about Cocorosie going into their show last night. I’d heard the albums and pondered that voice and the heavy production that went into achieving all those effects. A combination of a very convincing friend and PR team lead me to into the Black Cat to find something I was not expecting at all. Intricate dual distortion microphones. One singer who was clearly classically trained in opera. A harp. A clarinet. Percussion courtesy of a beat boxer and a backtrack. Sequined set designs. It turns out that that the unique trip-hop-meets-pixie-chanteuse sound on their recordings wasn’t the result of heavy production — it’s just how these women make music.
The crowd was primed for such a performance. This site could have gotten weeks worth of content if someone had been taking pictures of the line to get inside the Cat. There was dancing. A lot of dancing. The kind of dancing that’s usually very far removed from the District. Cocorosie, the musical moniker for sisters Bianca and Sierra Cassady, gave the exuberant crowd exactly what they came for. Working across their repertoire and moving from mics to instruments and back again, they lurched and swayed and jumped and spun through a nice long set. Musically. There’s no concrete way to describe the type of music Cocorosie makes, but it’s fluid, and splintered, and disarming, and creepy, and spiritual and celebratory at the same time.
They didn’t say much to the crowd throughout the night beyond thanking their accompanying players. Harsh black lines were painted across their faces, and the lighting was set up in such a way as to barely be able to see their mouths moving, or tell who was making what noise when. Despite all the distortion, it was a cozy show that, without huge volume or flourish, held the attention and captured the imagination of a near-capacity crowd. Definitely not an act for everyone, but if you can tune yourself to their frequency for a couple of hours, one well worth the trip.
Perhaps some the spectacle of it all would have been less surprising if I’d read up on the band before the show. I’m more or less noting this to point you all in the direction of their Wikipedia page. It is the wildest things I have ever read. By the time you get to, “The songs ‘Bear Hides and Buffalo’ and ‘Houses’ are featured in the gay zombie film ‘Otto; or Up with Dead People’ by Bruce LaBruce, 2008,” it doesn’t even strike you as funny. Go ahead and read it and inject a little crazy in your afternoon as you count the hours before the long weekend.
