CocoRosie

Noah's Ark (Touch and Go)

Sep 14, 2005 at 4:00 am
From the childlike front-cover drawing of a unicorn humping a horse (that's in turn humping a zebra that's barfing all over the place), and the back-cover photo of the sister duo dressed up like two Native American Boy Georges (we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried), CocoRosie's Noah's Ark is out there. That's without even mentioning the music, which is an almost-kitschy blend of subversive folk, gospel-ish blues, old spirituals, opera and even hip-hop. Delve into the song "K-Hole" to find hushed lyrics about aborted babies being turned into little Bambis over a lower than lo-fi proto-rap beat. Freak-folk hero Devendra Banhart drops by later in the album on "Brazilian Sun," and not even he can make these girls seem weirder. To the contrary, actually, this song is about as tame as this record gets, even with its opera-from-the-rainforest feel. Genius does indeed come in many fucked-up forms.