CocoRosie talks to Tempo
AS PART OF AN ONGOING
celebration of the group’s 20th Anniversary, CocoRosie will be bringing their Junkyard Witchez Tour to Taos this Sunday night when they perform at Daleee at the KTAOS Solar Center. Primarily composed of sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady, the influential group has released seven full-length LPs over the course of their storied career — continuing to both anticipate and buck musical trends at every turn. I was delighted to speak with Sierra Casady last week about the band’s current activities, and what drew them to perform in Northern New Mexico.
Richard Aufrichtig: When I saw that CocoRosie was playing in Taos, I was hoping we might be able to get together for an interview. I know you had a secret show in Taos a few years ago at the El Cortez Theatre, and I caught your excellent show in Santa Fe on that tour. I was curious what the connection is to Taos for the band, how it came onto the group’s radar, and where it stands in the cosmology of CocoRosie.
Sierra Casady: Taos is such a sweet place. We don’t come through small towns that often, and this is a special place. I graduated from Santa Fe High — and I wasn’t there for so long, but it was such an impressionable moment for me in my life. So, coming back to New Mexico has this very sacred, special thing for me. We rehearsed in Taos for a couple of weeks a few years ago when we were looking for a highaltitude place to rehearse. As singers, when you rehearse in high altitude, not only is it easier to breathe once you get on stage, but it also soothes your nerves, because you have more oxygen than what you’ve been rehearsing with. It really calms you down, so it’s a great technique. That combination drew us out to New Mexico a couple times in rehearsals. And, then, we just thought: “Why not? Let’s stop over in New Mexico and check out the scene, and give some love.”
RA: Well, it’s surely gonna be a boost to our local scene. I was seeing that the other spaces that the group has been playing recently are these epically large European concert halls, so it’s a real treat to have the show come out here. I know you just had a
bunch of shows in support of the “Elevator Angelz” EP, but my understanding is that the Junkyard Witchez Tour show is going to be with the full live CocoRosie band.
SC: Yeah. We’ve been dabbling in two very wide spectrums of sound and feeling for the CocoRosie shows lately, which is fun. With the full band, we have a lot of electronics. And then, we’ve also been stripping it back to being very naked and acoustic. It’s part of us celebrating the 20 years, and doing different things this year. And, there’s definitely more coming out for us. This is kind of just the beginning. We’re just getting going. But, being with our band is so sweet. Our beatboxer will be with us, and he’s doing electronic beat production mixed with his beatbox. It’s really awesome and special. He’s wonderful. That’s Tez. And, then Takuya [Nakamura]’s an amazing DJ and electronic musician, playing the trumpet at the same time as playing keys. He’s so creative and special. Bianca and I are really excited to be back with the band. It’s like our family.
RA: I was really struck by the recent “Elevator Angelz” EP. I’ve always really appreciated the kind of abstract spaces that you find on the CocoRosie records. But, there’s a classic beauty to the recordings on the new EP that I feel like the rest of the body of work is almost interrogating, or sort of working against. It was exciting
to hear some tracks embracing this new, for the group, stripped-down sound. It’s a gift to the listener to hear the kind of spare beauty of the voices. I was curious if you feel like that aesthetic will work its way into the future recorded work, or if this EP is just a little cul-de-sac on the journey.
SC: We had the same question. Even just a few months ago, we thought: this is gonna be interesting for us. And, once we started to paint the experience live on stage, it became very rich. Not only was it challenging and enticing, but it brought forward the most sensitive vocal experience for us. So, we’re hoping to do more of it. We’ll approach this stripped-down acoustic experience with a full body of songs, and a full release coming up soon. We’re working on that record right now, and it’s actually super dope.
RA: Cool! Where is the group based these days? Or, where is the center of recording activity?
SC: We were on tour, and we stopped into the most incredible studio ever in Berlin where they have a room for symphonic stuff as well. So, we’re hoping that we get to record the rest of the acoustic stuff in Europe. The tracks so far were recorded mostly in Paris, but this amazing place in Berlin has allowed us to foresee bringing in maybe a string orchestra for some of the work — but still keeping it thin, with a lot of space, and featuring just our voices.