Album: CocoRosie

La Maison de Mon Rêve, Touch And Go

A lo-fi duo comprised of the American sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, CocoRosie's idiosyncratic vocal stylings are supported by rudimentary piano, guitar, flute and percussion parts on La Maison de Mon Rêve, the debut album recorded in their Parisian apartment. Imagine Billie Holiday and Betty Boop doing a call-and-response routine over spare piano chords, birdsong and various clacking and banging noises, and you'll get some idea of their whimsical manner on "By Your Side", a song of wifely devotion whose dedication masks a more sinister undercurrent: "I'll wear your black eyes/ Bake you apple pies". There's a ramshackle charm to tracks like this and the opener "Terrible Angels", where Bianca's scraped glass or metal noises obtrude into their quirky theological musings ("If every angel's terrible, then why do you welcome them?"), and with references to Freud, Rilke, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, it's tempting to regard the Casady sisters as akin to characters from a Henry James story, expatriate Americans feeding their infatuation with Europe. But there are strict limits to how much mannered whimsy one can take at a single sitting, and while an EP of CocoRosie might have been enchanting, this album sinks under the accumulated weight of affectation.