The Treasure Hunt - CocoRosie

It’s difficult to think of a group able to elicit more strident responses than avant-pop duo CocoRosie.  Since their personal reunion after a decade of estrangement, sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady have divided listeners with four albums of ferociously individualistic music.  Although many have been captivated by their visually intense live shows and adamantly eccentric explorations of sonic texture, others have been put off by Bianca’s curdled vocals or the suspicion that very little lies beneath the duo’s Bohemian posing.

Taking a break from work on her upcoming art exhibition in Japan, Bianca isn’t fazed by the pair’s critics, pointing towards the benefits of a gripe often tossed her way.  “I think it takes a lot of self-indulgence to be an artist,” she comments through a blocked nose (Southern France not being the warmest of places to spend the winter).  “Really, for us it’s a sort of ecstasy … We are the ones who are getting a lot of pleasure out of it first, I don’t think we’d be doing it otherwise, and that’s really our compass for our work, it’s based on our bliss.”

In practice, this wide-eyed willingness to throw out any rulebooks and to follow their own impulses is what defines the CocoRosie modus operandi, elements from a vast range of sources including classical (Sierra is a trained opera singer), blues, hip-hop, dub-step and electronica being assembled with results that are unerringly their own.  “There is a sort of treasure hunt feeling that we have when we’re making music,” muses Bianca.  “It’s kind of like creating a sort of alchemy of distinct parts that don’t necessarily belong together.”

This willingness to pull aspects of distinct genres into their own self-contained world while transfiguring them in the process, perhaps accounts for the instantly striking quality of their music.  While their ultra-low-fi exercise in francophilia La Maison de Mon Reve in 2004 attracted no small degree of attention (prompting Touch and Go to take the uncommon step of seeking out the sister’s signatures), it was with their 2005 follow-up Noah’s Ark that they made their mark.  While guest spots from Antony Hegarty (and subsequent touring slot with the angel-voiced androgene) certainly didn’t hurt the cause, the album is a stunning musical confrontation of the residual warping effects of childhood traumas and externally imposed religious faith, a high mark that record number three, The Adventures Ghosthorse and Stillborn (2007), failed to reach.

The twilight world of last year’s Grey Oceans presented a return to form, albeit one wrapped in foreboding, largely acoustic, clothing.  As musically diverse as ever (see the collision of honky-tonk piano, hand-claps and jungle beats of ‘Hopscotch’ for example, or the sombre piano and lush strings of ‘Lemonade’), Grey Oceans is marked by a meditative atmosphere, Bianca’s lyrics reflecting her preoccupation with the natural world, or as she puts it “the perfection of imperfection.”

Although the album is easily the duo’s most cohesive and accessible collection to date, for Bianca the process of music-making remains a laborious one, each song representing a plunge into the unknown.  “We [start with] less of a map than in the beginning actually, which is partly what took the record so long to come together … We started out with a lot of dancey, more poppy music just as a kind of a naughty exercise in a really different direction, but after a couple of years … the record became a lot more melancholic and acoustic and more stripped down – much to our surprise.  So we really improvised more than ever with this record.”

While their previous work has featured guest artists such as Antony and Devendra Banhart, with Grey Oceans the pair took the unusual step of allowing a third party into the writing process, the contributions of pianist Gael Rakotondrabe providing some extra glue.  “[It was] very luxurious to work with a musician who’s really capable of improvising in any genre of music,” says Bianca of the experience.  “I think it allowed us to travel even more quickly, more vastly into these different genres … he brought a certain fluidity to the music which made the record more musical in a sense, more melodic.”

To foster the sort of bubble in which their creative processes flourish, the sisters maintain their isolation from the rest of the world for as much of the time as they can get away with, even while on tour.  “Real life for me can be more stressful,” says Bianca.  “All we do [on tour is] focus on preparing ourselves for performing.  There’s nothing else to think about and we don’t keep telephones with us or anything, so the outside world can’t even really contact us … just being near nature in a personless landscape is what really propels my poetry and my ideas these days.”

Remaining apart certainly seems to provide the kind of uninhibited space necessary for the ongoing reinvention of the fabulous beast that is CocoRosie, with things set to be shaken up completely following upcoming Australian appearances.  “After we have our Asian Australian tour, we’re going to really completely reshape our band and kind of start from scratch, and we’re pretty excited about that.  We’re gonna really just have the two of us working together again.”

First published in The Brag, Iss. 395, January 17th 2011

Ten Years On - The Decemberists

In the world of Colin Meloy, mythic characters stride gargantuan across wild, untamed landscapes, seeking (and occasionally receiving) love, while being undone by malign authority, inner flaw or other tragic circumstance.  Unlike so many songwriters of note, the Decemberists’ scoundrel-in-chief has built his band’s reputation not on soul-baring angst but by spinning grand narratives set to raucous and insistently good-humoured folk-rock tunes.  That said, there’s a definite tendency for the guy not to get the girl and for the pair of them to wind up fish food.

“I guess I just have kind of a penchant for tragedy,” explains Meloy from his home in Portland, Oregan, ahead of the release of the group’s sixth LP The King Is Dead.  “The pathos of life in a narrative is more interesting to write about.  I find protagonists who are either tragic or have a kind of core vulnerability tend to be more dynamic and interesting to me, rather than just singing about myself – [there are] plenty of vulnerabilities there but none that I’m really interested in singing about.”

At best, his approach has produced rambling yarns that are both sophisticated parables, laden with delightfully erudite flourishes, while being instantly accessible foot-stomping singalongs.  Think the Victorian sea-shanty kitsch of ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’ from Picaresque (2005) or the retelling of the titular Japanese folk story on The Crane Wife (2006), Meloy revelling in rolling ballads that sometimes extend in excess of ten minutes.

This predilection for the grandiose reached its logical apex with the band’s last album The Hazards of Love (2009), a sprawling hour long rock opera complete with key characters being voiced by guest vocalists including Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Jim James (My Morning Jacket).  For many however, Meloy had perhaps bitten off more than he could chew, the song-writing often failing to match the album’s lofty ambitions.

Not that he seems too worried.  “I think that every time that we’ve made something big, the point [has been] to make it overblown.  I think that that’s what’s sort of clever about it, kind of funny, to toy with bigger and bigger horizons … it’s just toying with genre, toying with approaches, creating new signifiers, different places, different people, using the trappings of older kinds of music.  I think we are prepared to do that in a little more subtle way this time around than we have in the past.”

Fans overwhelmed by the excesses of Hazards will be pleased that The King Is Dead sees the Decemberists scaling things back, each song being its own self-contained entity, with only one exceeding the five minute mark.  Taken as a whole, the collection seemingly reflects more modest aspirations on the part of Meloy, the theatrical gestures of past releases giving way to more straightforward folk-inflected indie that self-consciously pays homage to one of the songwriter’s formative inspirations, R.E.M.

“I think that they’re one of the bands that first helped me create my own musical outlook,” says Meloy of the latter.  “Them and the Replacements and Husker Dü and the Smiths, those are the bands that were incredibly influential for me, not only in discovering what music was like, but what kind of person I was and my own desires creatively … Inevitably, I feel like everything I do musically is indebted to R.E.M. – I think I just wear it a little more on my sleeve on this record.”

Indeed, the album even features one of the band’s members, guitarist Peter Buck contributing to three songs including rootsy first single ‘Down by the Water’, although ‘Calamity Song’ pays more obvious homage with its unmistakable mix of drivingly upbeat melody and apocalyptic lyrics.  Meloy is enthusiastic about working with one of his idols.

“He’s a really sweet, kind man, and works very quickly, professionally and is a really fun guy to be around.  I first met him in 1991 when I was 16.  I snuck into The Crocodile in Seattle after a My Bloody Valentine / Yo La Tengo show and R.E.M. were in town – I think they were mixing or mastering Automatic for the People – and Michael Stipe and Peter Buck were both in there.  I bought a glass of red wine for Peter Buck and chatted with him.  He didn’t remember that exchange, but he still treats me very nicely.”

As well as its back-to-basics approach, The King is Dead also marks the ten year anniversary since the release of Decemberists first effort, the 5 Songs EP, back in 2001.  With a decade of music-making under his belt, Meloy seems ready to let the band sit on the backburner for a while in order to pursue other creative avenues.  “Having been at this now for ten years, it’s been pretty constant in what we’ve done creatively, but there are other things I’d like to do.  I’m not putting the Decemberists away completely but I would like to step away, take a longer time away from the band and focus on other things.”

Such as?  “Certainly working on something with theatre, but I’ve also been working on a series of books with my wife Carson, who does all the illustrations for the band and we are working on a series of illustrated novels and the first one, Wild Wood, comes out next year, so that’s probably where my head will be for the foreseeable future after the touring cycle is done.”

First Published in The Brag, Iss. 394, January 10th 2011

Summer Sounds With A Bit Of Bite - John Steel Singers

It’s a quarter to eleven on an unseasonally hot October morning and the John Steel Singers are running late.  A punishing schedule of press meetings arranged ahead of the release of their long-awaited debut Tangalooma have proved no match for delayed flights and Sydney’s traffic. The Surry Hills offices of their label Dew Process are pleasant enough though, and before long, trimly hirsute frontman Tim Morrissey and spectacularly afro-ed drummer Ross Chandler are ushered in - gratefully clutching cups of instant coffee and muttering about time zones and sleep deprivation.  “I’ve been up since a quarter to five this morning,” murmurs Morrissey, “so I’m a little bit tired – we lose an hour cause of daylight savings.” Despite his lethargy Morrissey is all business, carefully sticking to talking points while Ross seems content to sit in the corner, offering occasional clarification. “I’m a very quiet person,” he explains simply.

Expectations have been percolating for the JSS for some time now. The band was formed close to five years ago by Brisbane natives Morrissey and fellow songwriter Scott Bromiley, the project being named in homage to Morrissey’s childhood toy horse, John Steel.   “I wanted to start a band since about grade eight,” he says, eyes boring intently  through his glasses. “I didn’t know how to play anything so I would just write songs in my head. I would meet people, and I was always trying to envisage them in my band, but it wasn’t until I was actually twenty years old that I met Scott… He ended up teaching me some guitar, and we ended up forming a band after that.”

From this seed the pair gradually expanded the line-up (currently stabilised at an even six), juggling personnel (“we’re like Spinal Tap with bass players”), incorporating brass (a move that was “never intentional”), cutting their teeth through some persistent touring up and down the east coast while developing their own idiosyncratic style with a pair of EPs and mini-album. And acclaim began to flow, the band taking out triple j’s Unearthed Artist of the Year award back in 2008, while garnering a reputation among punters for live sets brimming with youthful exuberance and prodigious quantities of hair.

It’s odd then that their debut long player Tangalooma, a collection of breezy pop songs buoyed by some creative arrangements and tempered with lyrical bite, has taken so long to emerge. “We’ve always taken a long time to do things,” says Morrissey. “We never did any really rough early demos, we just went into the studio after we’d saved up enough money to do it, and I think that was a little bit like the same thing with the album – we wanted to make sure we could do it the way we wanted to do it.” The album was actually mixed and mastered by October last year. After that, he says, the “music industry side of things” took over. “It has definitely been a year longer than we hoped,” he continues, “but that has its benefits as well – in that year we’ve been writing new songs, and the next album definitely won’t take as long as this one did.”

In order to get the right sound on the record, the band were fortunate in being able to call on the talents of Robert Forster; producer, critic, songwriter, and one of Morrissey’s musical idols.  “The Fire and Flood benefit up in Brisbane was on, and we were playing and Robert was also on the bill,” he explains. Forster’s drummer Glen Thompson and bassist Adele Pickvance weren’t available, “so he actually asked us if we wanted to be his backing band. For people who are massive Go-Betweens fans, to [be] asked to play Go-Betweens songs as Robert Forster’s backing band, that opportunity doesn’t come around very often … [it] was bloody surreal,” Morrissey says. “We wanted to get a producer and Robert’s name came up, and we were like, ‘yeah! Let’s do it!’”

The result is one of the best Australian releases in a year that has seen no shortage of strong debuts. Morrissey claims inspiration from sources as diverse as David Byrne, Ray Davies and The Kinks and widely influential English post-punk group Wire. He also pays due respect to the morphing euphoria of post-rock pioneers Talk Talk, with the moody atmospherics of Spirit of Eden being an important shaping force for Tangalooma, particularly its closing track, ‘Sleep’.  “I guess the album’s pretty densely layered so there’s parts you’re not necessarily aware of,” says Morrissey, “Nicholas [Vernhes] the engineer [who’s previously worked with Animal Collective, Deerhunter and Spoon] probably stripped away a lot of unnecessary stuff as well… Hopefully it sounds like John Steel Singers, and hopefully whether we flop or go well it’ll rest on us sounding like the John Steel Singers.”

While the JSS sound is generally bright and bouncy, lyrically Tangalooma delves into darker territory. Although it’s “definitely not a concept album”, Morrissey and Bromiley’s thoughtful and literate lyrics draw on a shared fascination with Ernest Becker’s 1974 Pulitzer winner The Denial of Death - exploring ideas of mortality, desire and the stories people tell themselves to stay sane in a material world. “Both Scott and I were getting to a time in our lives when we were experiencing similar anxieties about the nature of everything,” explains Morrissey. “You sort of have to lie, have a vital lie to keep yourself going as a human being … most functioning humans lie to themselves about certain things, but everyone does it and it’s vital to being human… I dunno, I’m not very good at explaining this out loud!”

Rather than buying into any of the solutions offered by the world of the gainfully employed, the John Steel Singers seem intent on becoming their own heroes (as the caped horses adorning the cover art of Tangalooma might suggest), throwing themselves into the musical lifestyle with total dedication. The forecast for their next year is a whirlwind of touring, writing and recording.  “I worked out the other day that I’d only, in my twenty-seven years, worked about three or four months at most of full-time work in, like, jobs,” says Morrissey.  “So, as long as I can avoid doing that for as long as possible, that would be excellent.”

First Published in The Brag, Iss. 390, December 6th 2010