CocoRosie On Their 20 Year Artistic Career and Reinvention

Experimental sister-duo, CocoRosie released their 8th studio album, “Little Death Wishes,” on March 28th. With over twenty years of experience under their belt as musicians, their sound and lyrics are bold and raw, with music being only one of the duo’s artistic endeavors. Together, they mix several sounds, techniques and genres within the confines of each song. The avant-garde approach fuses electronic, classical, lo-fi, opera, live instrumentals, and their masterfully crafted poetry turned lyrics. CocoRosie is inspired by several forms of artistic expression that have continued to hook fans and reel in new ones. 

I sat down with CocoRosie duo, Bianca and Sierra, a day ahead of their album release party on 3/28.  

You guys have been together for 20 years making music. What would be your elevator pitch as to who you are? 

Bianca: So we're sisters. I had never heard my sister sing before until I was 21. And I heard her sing and I went totally crazy, and I wanted to start a band and that was it. And we're both singers with very different styles. During our career we've had just so many incredible moments where our contrast is our strength and powers our music. And we've never strived to be similar and have just remained in respect and awe of each other's differences and supporting each other that way. So we are a musical group of two singers. 

In that regard, how has the ethos stayed the same, or has it changed throughout the years?

Bianca: We began in the bedroom or the bathroom or wherever. And since then we've ventured around the world to beautiful and exciting studios and played with wonderful musicians. And for this last record, we went back to the bedroom, the closet, actually.

Sierra: Something in between a bedroom and closet. 

Bianca: Yeah, there's like a small space for vocals and just producing ourselves. And we’ve returned to that incredible environment. There's no words to describe it when it's just us, there's no shyness. We're not self-conscious, it's just this ultimate cozy space. So we returned back there for this recent record. 

Throughout the albums there's many textures involved, the lyrics are really captivating. Could you just walk me through the beginning of starting this album? I know you - talked about it a little, but how did you complete this album? What originally inspired it? 

Sierra: Basically shit went down, not with the music, but in life. Divorce, motherhood, just things that are terrible. So we're like, “okay, let's go. Let's do this. Let's make a record now. Let's bring it.”

I saw a few of those themes throughout the album of grief, family, and moving on. Do you feel like you've really put yourself into this album? And has it helped you process things that happened before?

Bianca: It's only the beginning because the music's coming out and we're going to be performing it live for a while, and that's a whole other phase of catharsis. It's very interesting and I've always felt really grateful to be the kind of artists we are because we get to do that. I just feel so grateful for that. It's not just about putting it out, but it's like a dialogue with yourself where you get to reflect back on a certain experience through different phases. 

How does that kind of alter the way that you see the songs, being able to switch between writing it and then performing it, what really changes for you?

Sierra: Just a memory from the early stages of the record. I remember when, I think it had been some time since we had written very many songs. I was longing again for that. All of a sudden there was a divorce, and I was like, “oh yeah, this is great. Okay, tell me more.” But I was kind of in that space where I was like, “okay, I want to take advantage of this.” 

Bianca: There's multiple breakups on this record. So it really has a lot of depth. As much as we go into storytelling and fiction, there's always a personal story coming through and sometimes we use the fiction just to say something that we couldn't dare say.

Does that relate to “Cut Stitch Scar” about those similar themes that you were talking about? 

Bianca: It definitely has a heartbreak in it. There's a lot of heartbreak on the record. Generations of heartbreak.

Sierra: Our mother’s heartbreak. 

Bianca: Even her first heartbreak, her childhood. It's a lot of, I wouldn't say trauma, it's more like owning the fact that we're made up of a collective experience of pain and resilience. So grandmother, mother, our own, and it's all intertwined. We know that to be true and it gets in the music as well. 

That also relates to one of the songs, “Least I Have You,” which seems kind of like an ode to each other and maybe your family as well. Would you say that that has that same background about life, family and life battles a little bit? 

Bianca: Certainly does. It's kind of repeating our own mother's story with love. So telling her version, telling our version, and then through that sort of repetition of lyrics showing that there’s an echo and the experience.

And typically when you guys create music, what does that process really look like? 

Bianca: There's a lot of trying different things. And we have our kind of go-to modes. I go to drum machines and she goes to keyboards and maybe harp, but creating melody. And so we have our go-to spaces, but we had fun. For instance, me kind of directing her to create beats for some of the songs, and they're some of the most quintessential ones. So we're always reaching into each other's pots. I used to say that I was writing a lot of the lyrics, but this record is a little different. She wrote a lot of lyrics. So it's kind of a meeting of our styles of writing, but she has a pretty predominant voice, which is a unique flavor to this record.

Well, in your collaboration, what do you think are some of your strengths working together? 

Bianca: I think I bring poetry as my most basic offering. And if I could say, Sierra brings character through voice and then a kind of innocent musicality through multi-instrumentalist approach, but through the voice bringing up the storyteller. So we often are making one storyteller because of what we're putting together.

I feel like through your art and music, I see a lot of creativity in your self expression and music videos, there's a lot there. So what other mediums of art do you really feel inspired by?

Sierra: Well, I have a little story. I came from a classical background that wasn't a classical musician per se, but I studied opera. And early on my guides and professors were very against musical theater. It was like a big no, don't even mention it. So that was ingrained in me. And more recently, in the last 10 years, I started composing for musical theater, and it turned out to be so fun. And it doesn't have to be a traditional story or environment of working with a cheesy director. But we ran into working with Robert Wilson. He's an avant-garde director. And he ended up being a kindred spirit and became an uncle to us. I fell in love with musical theater. So that's something a little outside of our normal work in the last 10 years that I just let down my guard and let the shame go now and had a lot of fun with. I was like, this is what I was meant to do. But I was shy because I thought it was really shameful.

I was reading some online discourse, and one comment someone wrote is that “no one can continuously remake and recreate their own material like CocoRosie. They have mastered that.” And I thought that was such an interesting comment. So what are your thoughts on that comment and within the last few decades, how do you think you've really been reinventing yourselves?

Bianca: I love that comment because I think we're just really experiencing that fact. I think it has to do with the longevity of the project. There's over 20 years, (and) we've changed so much that we can just dip back into ourselves and it's still going to be different, but there's so much to choose from. So we can kind of recycle ourselves at least as a departure and then something new comes. But we always have a place to start.

Sierra: One of the places we started making this record, a feeling and space was kind of industrial 80s music with opera singing. The record didn't really take on those qualities in the end. They faded away, but that's kind of where we started. And in a way it was very inventive. I mean it was natural for both of us. She was playing a real drum kit and then we were sequencing it into drum patterns and stuff. But it was in the warehouse, so it had that big reverb, and so it sounded 80s. And then I was singing opera in the warehouse, and it was kind of a reinventing process in a way. That was fun. 

For this next year, what is one goal that you want to accomplish?

Bianca: I think for me, just stepping back onto the stage deep in a tour that we can find our potential on stage again. That's it.

Sierra: Mine's similar, and it's a very exciting dream. We want to finally make a live record. We've had so many live recordings, but we've really held back. Now I think we're going to take the opportunity because it's a tour of almost 50 shows. So I'm excited to make a live record.

Find CocoRosie on Instagram, Spotify and their website. Listen to their latest studio album, “Little Death Wishes,” here.

All photos via Tori McGraw (@afterr.hourrs)