CocoRosie

CocoRosie is an American musical group formed in 2003 by sisters Sierra Rose "Rosie" and Bianca Leilani "Coco" Casady.

[1] The group's music has been described as folktronica, freak folk and "New Weird America",[2] and incorporates elements of pop, blues, opera, electronica, and hip hop.

[3] The group has released seven studio albums, La Maison de Mon Rêve (2004), Noah's Ark (2005), The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn (2007), Grey Oceans (2010), Tales of a GrassWidow (2013), Heartache City (2015), and Put the Shine On (2020), and two EPs, Beautiful Boyz (2004) and Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food (2009).

[13] Their parents divorced when Sierra was four and Bianca was two [14] and the sisters, who identify as "part Native American",[15] stayed with their late mother, Christina Chalmers (née Hunter), Iowan artist, singer, Steiner/Waldorf teacher, and "healer"[8] of Syrian Orthodox ancestry who "compulsively moved" and "kept throwing away everything the family owned and starting all over again.

[20] Their mother's partner was the New Age spiritual leader Brooke Medicine Eagle, whom Bianca has said "carried [her] in a papoose around sacred Anasazi grounds" as a child.

[21] The Casady sisters have said their maternal grandfather, who they have never met,[22] was Cherokee and that their mother believed her nomadic tendencies were because "her Syrian ancestors must have had a lot of Gypsy in them."

"[26][9] The sisters spent some childhood summers with him, where they experienced him "dragging us on vision quests ... as a little kid, sometimes it's a nightmare, you're out in the desert, you don't have any food".

[29][30][31] The Casady sisters' mother, Christina Chalmers, died in January 2017 during the production of CocoRosie's seventh album, Put the Shine On, eleven days after providing backing vocals for the track "Ruby Red", which is about her life.

[37] According to a 2007 Clash interview, the sisters had "hardly spoke a word to each other for ten years" at that point, with Bianca saying they "had seen each other a few times, but... abstained from speaking to each other.

"[37] The individual tracks created in the process were compiled into an album which would later be released as CocoRosie's debut, La Maison de Mon Rêve.

The album includes collaborations with Anohni from Antony and the Johnsons ("Beautiful Boyz"), Devendra Banhart ("Brazilian Sun"), and French rapper Spleen ("Bisounours").

The project is signed to Voodoo Eros Records, a new label started by Bianca with business partner Melissa Shimkovitz.

No official explanation was released; vague and unconfirmed reports claimed that unidentified members of the band were arrested and deported while crossing the Canada–US border.

The duo spent much of 2008 writing and recording in various locations such as New York city, Réunion, Paris and Berlin where they also teamed up with artist Neda Sanai that is the spoken word voice on the song "R.I.P Burn Face".

A self-released EP entitled Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food was made available for sale exclusively at CocoRosie shows on June 3, 2009.

[58] The group also released a behind the scenes video on their YouTube account of themselves in the studio recording two songs for the album, "Hairnet Paradise" and "Big and Black.

[64] CocoRosie have been frequent collaborators of American avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson, composing scores to his award-winning international productions including "Peter Pan" (2013) at the Berliner Ensemble, "Pushkin's Fairy Tales" (2015) in Moscow, "Edda"[65] (2017) at the Norske Theater in Oslo and "The Jungle Book" (2019) in Luxembourg.

On January 17, 2017, the group released the single "Smoke 'em Out" featuring Anohni, a protest song against the presidential election of Donald Trump, while also confirming that they had started working on their next album, Put the Shine On.

[66][67] During a 2005 interview, Bianca and Sierra Casady described an album that they had recorded prior to La Maison de Mon Rêve.

An article in the April 5, 2007 issue of Czech magazine HIS Voice about The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn mentioned a previously unknown body of work, created by the Casady sisters, titled Word to the Crow.

Shortly after, on April 13, an article about CocoRosie on Czech news website Aktuálně wrote that on the day before the release of La Maison de Mon Rêve, the sisters recorded an "improvised rap album" of the same title.

The tracks "Bear Hides and Buffalo" and "Bloody Twins" are used in the 2008 gay zombie film Otto; or Up with Dead People by Bruce LaBruce.

[83] Sound illustrator Frédéric Sanchez used the tracks "Brazilian Sun", "Good Friday", and "Not for Sale" on the soundtrack for Miuccia Prada's Spring 2006 show, titling the piece "Coco Rosie Through the Looking Glass".

They reject criticism of their anti-religious views as political correctness, saying that cultural sensitivity can be a "big threat to feminism" and that they value women's rights more than freedom of religion.

Bianca performing live in 2007.
Sierra performing live in 2005.