Artist:
COCOROSIE
Label:
TOUCH & GO
Video:
“RAINBOWARRIORS”
Director:
Kai Regan
Add Date:
May 22, 2007

Hello music video programming friends nationwide! It’s Andy Gesner and the staff from HIP Video Promo, here with the latest video from a one-of-a-kind act that we’re proud to say we’ve worked with before. The first descriptor that comes to mind when we think of CocoRosie is “unafraid”: unafraid to push their music in unconventional directions, unafraid of their unique and expressive voices, unafraid to craft an outrageous and striking public image, and unafraid to constantly challenge their audience. Each album has been a true departure – a discrete and coherent musical set, containing its own internal logic and miniature-scale universe of associations. La Maison De Mon Reve, their debut, fused indiepop and European art song, classical music, and contemporary acid-folk. The follow-up, Noah’s Ark, felt dangerously childlike, transgressive, confessional, and avant-garde.

Now comes The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn – and we’re confident you’ve never heard anything like it. The warm, weird indiepop is still here, as is the strange and primal aesthetic, but to it, the Casady sisters have added elements of hip-hop, dance and beat music, and even opera (Sierra Casady studied voice at the Paris Conservatory, and she’s got the dazzling upper register to prove it!). “Rainbowarrior”, the exciting – and remarkably accessible – lead track, combines rapping and record-scratching with oddball instrumentation, the whinnying of horses, and a gorgeous sung chorus that wouldn’t sound out of place at Carnegie Hall. It’s a pastiche worthy of Dee-Lite’s World Clique, a production as cutting-edge and artful as Madonna’s recent work with Stuart Price, and a completely new musical direction for CocoRosie.

But as it always is with CocoRosie, it’s the sisters’ voices that will attract the most attention. Bianca and Sierra Casady coo, patter, and soar through the track, imparting personality to every line. Bianca is as conversational as Sierra is classic, spilling rhymes of hope and defiance and flowing effortlessly over the gigantic backbeat. It’s that versatility that has, in part, made CocoRosie such a formidable draw on the festival circuit, both in the U.S and in Europe. After a May spent in the hippest American clubs, they’ll be touring the Continent until autumn.

The duo’s reputation for provocative imagery precedes them as well. Here’s a pair of attractive sisters who are fond of wearing pencil mustaches and men’s clothing, and who love to appear in sexually ambiguous poses that subvert gender expectation. They’re perfect subjects, then, for director Kai Regan’s unconventional eye. Regan’s astonishing clip for “Noah’s Ark” took CocoRosie to the stars and back, imagining the sisters as interstellar entities. The video for “Rainbowarrior” is hardly more earthbound – though this time around, it’s club-light rather than starlight that Bianca and Sierra bask under.

Bianca Casady appears in military uniform, thin moustache attached firmly to her face and blush on her cheeks; she emerges from a void between three sweeping spotlights. As an androgynous child beats a tattoo on a drum, she addresses the camera with some of the emcee’s bravado. Yet every masculine gesture conceals a feminine grace, and by the second verse, there’s a frailty to her delivery that beckons the viewer closer. The shots during the chorus only deepen the mystery: here, Bianca and Sierra appear in black gowns, hair spilling down their shoulders. By the end of the clip, the party has broken out in force, and revelers with wild makeup and couture dance beneath the flashing purple lights, each one ecstatic, confident in his or her own irreducible uniqueness.

As is to be expected, Sara Tolbert and the crew at Touch and Go records have delivered another standout video for your viewing pleasure! We have enough copies to go around of The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn for all of your on-air giveaway needs, so don’t hesitate to drop us a line if you’d like to get your hands on some copies! If you need more info, call Andy Gesner at 732-613-1779 or e-mail us at info@HIPVideoPromo.com. You can also visit www.TGRec.com, orwww.CocoRosieLand.com to find out more about CocoRosie.

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For info about CocoRosie’s video, “Noah’s Ark” click HERE