Album review: CocoRosie, Tales of a Grasswidow (City Slang)

Tales of a Grasswidow is easily CocoRosie's most satisfying, fully realised work so far, mostly because the Casady sisters have harnessed their peculiar talents to a concept that suits them perfectly: the dehumanisation of humankind in general and the abusive disregard towards women in particular.

Bianca Casady's elfin warble has never been as effectively employed as when evoking the plight of an infant hostage to brutal custom in "Child Bride" or the child asking the titular old woman of "Gravediggress" to bury her love for safe keeping. Nor have the duo's delicate, Japanese-flavoured arrangements of keyboards, flute and percussive bricolage offered such aptly vulnerable settings before.

Download: After the Afterlife; Child Bride; Gravediggress; Roots of My Hair