Coco Rosie - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn (Touch and Go)
2/5
By: Thomas Hannan
A verse or so in and you think this is it. They've done it. Coco Rosie have gone and made a great pop album. And it's going to sit there amongst the best CDs I own, sneering at the others. It's got distant kazoos on it, it's wholly catchy and just a little bit sad. It's what 'Noah's Ark' hinted at, and I'm going to really, really love it.
And it pains my fingers to even type this to you, but what 'Rainbow Warriors' becomes is not the first track on the band's breakthrough LP, but merely the least annoying of the songs on this, the third of their albums, a record which is doomed to slip in to obscurity just like the rest. Only this time, that slip will not be because people aren't listening, but just because they've not made a particularly good record. Like a lot of it, that kazoo really starts to grate, let me tell you.
OK, so it's not instantly annoying straight after that. It's just a bit... well it doesn't sound as if it's really there. There's nothing to it. Things like 'Promise', well, they're fine an'all, but it's hardly a particularly shining example of songwriting now is it? How can it be, when next to nothing actually goes on? And what do you get when you take away the song writing side of Coco Rosie, the side that made 'Noah's Ark' such a joy? The gimmicks. That's what.
And 'The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn' is full of those quirky little things we're meant to love about Coco Rosie, but on this record there are so many of them (there's one before you've even pressed play - that title) that it's impossible to get beyond their silliness and actually find the songs - that's if there are any, bar 'Rainbow Warrior'. Songs here, things like the whining filler of 'Bloody Twins'... well it doesn't sound like a song was so much written as one just happened. But Coco Rosie are great songwriters, not great improvisers, not great storytellers. Not with this flimsy a backing. And it's a real pain.
This should have been the one to break them, to make them go stellar, the one where they followed up on all that promise, the one where they did a Bjork, the one where they changed the mainstream by showing it what could be done. Instead, much like Regina Spektor's 'Begin To Hope', they pander to it and hope they're loved. Wrong way around, girls. You had it right the first time. You make us follow you, if you don't mind. Don't worry about what it is us masses want. We haven't got a flippin' clue.
Sometimes there are laudable ideas present, but they're carried out in a way which has them doomed to failure. 'Japan' and its tales of rape and war set to that jaunty and admittedly ridiculously catchy backing shouldn't and doesn't work. Sure, though it was great fun to see them perform it live and gaze upon the girls lurching around and doing those funny hip hop hand movements that don't suit them, you're not able to see any of that thanks to this being, y'know, a CD and not a gig - and as such you have to focus on things like voices, and what those voices are saying, and how they are saying it. And lyrically, the centrepiece to the LP that is 'Japan' really struggles - lines like the rasped "take you home and then they'll rape you, but you like it so say thank you!" is a lyric that has me feeling very, very queasy every time. There are also lines that seem a little trite - "everyone wants to go to Iraq, but when they go they don't come back" for example - surely people this intelligent could find something better to say about the horrors of war than this? Personally I think perhaps "war?! Boo! Hiss!" has about as much use in bringing about world peace, but I've said it now, so we'll see. We'll see who wins.
It just seems so, so laboured, so try hard, far too unnatural. It's like they're attempting to be taken seriously by being sillier, and I just don't understand the rationale behind that. Coco Rosie make even less sense now than they ever did, but whereas before not being able to figure them out was part of the fun, now you'll find it difficult to pinpoint just what it is that makes Coco Rosie tick because they've betrayed that marvellous experimentation displayed on their first two records by being so disappointingly blatant about their each and every sentiment, whether light hearted or doom laden, sonic or emotional.
Granted, not all of it is that bad - and I'm delighted to report the good bits, really - 'Sunshine' for example sounds comparatively breezy, like a band comfortable with itself. Yes, it could be on a mobile phone advert and if that happened it would make them mega famous for what is by far their weakest album, in a similar way to how people think of Devendra Banhart now as that "little white snapping turtle" guy (what is he doing?!), and that would be a shame. But I'm searching for nice things here, and sadly, they don't learn from the success of 'Sunshine' at all - 'Black Poppies', which follows it, is a half formed song delivered in a daft voice (which one dearly hopes is being put on rather than her natural tone), a composition which sadly undoes all the good work of its predecessor.
'Werewolf' arrives, and things get worse. With spoken word samples akin to those that are used in DJ Shadow's 'Letter From Home' (from 'The Private Press') and the return of that sodding kazoo, it's the over layering that ruins what could have been quite a lovely melody. 'Animals' however is better, an example of where they've bothered to actually write a tune, and furthermore not bothered to ruin it with gimmicky, oh-so-zany flourishes. It's just so difficult to be affected by this music when they're constantly trying so hard to be so quirky. That didn't used to matter with this band, but it's what makes this record so difficult to love.
Performance wise, much of these 'Adventures...' are incredibly impressive. 'Houses' for example - here's a song where the opera side of the band really gets to shine rather brightly. Problem is, despite the great delivery, it's certainly not a great song. It adds nothing to the album as a whole, apart from prompting a thought that this would have been an LP to be reckoned with if these amazing performers had taken the time to write better songs. This is why Hendrix was the greatest guitar player of all time - not only was his technical playing amazing, but the songs he wrote, the actual stuff he was playing, were f**king incredible. Coco Rosie are only halfway there. They used to be further along than this, even. Remember 'Beautiful Boys'?
As if we need another example of their supposed quirkiness, toward the end we're treated to another spoken word, Shadow-like composition called 'Girl and the Geese', a story about a girl who turns in to a goose and finds out that all geese were once human. It's not a story you need to hear. It ruins the pace, it contributes to you forgetting the better songs on this record, it's thoroughly annoying.
Antony (but not the Johnsons) makes an appearance on 'Miracle', but even he can't save this. Coco Rosie now seem like the kind of people who are good to have as guests on other albums - Tarantula AD (sorry, they're called Priestbird now, sorry, sorry), Antony and the Johnsons etc., perhaps even some hip hop - but they used to make great records themselves. The saddest thing is that just as people have started to care about them, just as they've had all these inspiring people tell them how talented they are, they've stopped making good records.
Stream two tracks from 'The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn' HERE.
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