[‘France’] “Those, those beautiful
boys / Those, those beautiful boys / Born illegitimately / To a whore, most
likely / He became an orphan / Oh what a lovely orphan he was / Sent to the
reformatory / Ten years old, was his first glory / Got caught stealing from a
nun / Now his love story had begun” -
those lyrics are pretty much why I went to this show - and because I think
their general sound is pretty remarkable – [on a side note, you’ve got to hear
how they sing the song to really appreciate it, and, as usual for me, it was
not played at their live show which I sadly realized was because it features
Antony from Antony and the Johnsons who was not touring with them] - it ends up
I may have been more enthused about the crowd than the band, but the band
deserves a lot of credit for the crowd – so the crowd was fantastic – some mix
of neo psych hippies, ravers, plain old burners, steam punks, and some
unfortunate ones in renaissance garb – the common theme was iridescent eye
paint or painted-on pencil moustaches on girls, which I came to find out was
part of the whole CocoRosie cult I didn’t know existed – surprisingly, at least
to me, there were also lots and lots of lesbians – I’m always confused as to
how the lesbians unite and figure out which bands they love but turns out one
of the sisters is a lesbian plus the band promotes drag, androgyny, etc. – there
were also an awful lot of young females falling out, e.g., being carried out
because of excess consumption – not sure if it’s because the crowd was pretty
young or if the band attracts a druggier crowd – anyway, the band is comprised
of 2 sisters who are artistes in every sense of the word – one had long
romantic hair and sang in an operatic voice (properly trained) and plucked a
harp – the other one with the squeaky baby voice that defines CocoRosie (at
least to me) strutted around with male attitude and had a baseball cap on top
of a feminine doo-rag on top of long brown hair – I much preferred her – there
was a keyboardist guy and then a little unassuming guy who did a human beat box
solo that was amazing and referenced actual American hip-hop songs – their
music is a lot more diverse than I was aware of before the show – they manage
to incorporate electronic, hip-hop, classical, and pop into a sound that ends
up being pretty distinctly theirs – many bizarre instruments come into play - I
think the thing I liked most about their sound is that they play childhood
innocence off of the dark realizations of growing up and seeing stuff – especially
with the two sisters interplaying their vastly different attitudes and sounds
(think Enya intermixed with ghetto dance rap), it’s a bizarre but beautiful
marriage of cultures (which I am always a fan of) – so I thought they were from
France and assumed their inclusion of rap and the bad sister’s headdress was a
nod to the French Muslim outcasts - I
also assumed their air of hipster superiority was a product of general French
superiority… but turns out, they’re American, and the superiority is a product
of New York – the good sister moved to France early on to study opera but the
bad sister moved to Brooklyn to party at Kill Whitie parties – those parties are
a whole other conversation, but the sisters are worth looking up in general
because of their interesting backgrounds – other notes of interest: 1) Rockboy
overheard a couple mating in the outhouse bathrooms, 2) the most shocking girl
was the one in a modest dress with granny panties that clearly shone through (a
lesson to the young girls) , 3) the bad sister moistened her clarinet in her
beer like the bad ass she is, 4) Rockboy happily gave up all claims of being a
hipster once he realized that hipsters are now parting at the back of their
skull and combing their hair forward,
and 5) there is a series of really interesting photos of the sisters that do a
nice job of expressing their artistic vision. (Photo courtesy of
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