CocoRosie: Smokey Taboo

CocoRosie's new LP Grey Oceans has evoked mixed reactions.

The Line of Best Fit says:

Evidently there is something slightly magic going on. CocoRosie were good before, but now their exotic, unique charm is tempered with songwriting maturity. Grey Oceans gathers influences and instruments – nursery rhymes, electronica, choral music, hip hop, Indian strings, even a sample of their mother singing in Cherokee on the mournful, mumbled ‘Undertaker’ – into well-crafted, intensely evocative songs.

Drowned in Sound says:

For all their faults, the world is undoubtedly a richer place to have a group like CocoRosie out there doing what they do and getting modest attention for it.

While Eric Grandy in the Portland Mercury says:

It's not damning that they engage with hiphop or affect old-timey mannerisms, it's that the results are so facile and fallow and precious. It's that their songs somehow manage to be both grating and yet so flimsy that they're barely even there.

Well, I like this live performance of a track from the LP. The vocals are poised between Lisa Hennigan wholesomeness and Bjorkian kookiness.

More about CocoRosie on Wikipedia.