REVIEWS - CocoRosie - Noah's Ark (Touch and Go)

Fêted for their mystifying melodies, CocoRosie’s Casady sisters return after nearly a year and a half with their new album Noah’s Ark. Following their debut La Maison de Mon Reve, CocoRosie create a less convincing, more sophomoric album. This time around, they invite cameos from Devendra Banhart, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons…and a stray cat. But like the blenders, house appliances and broken baby pianos that create Noah’s Ark, CoCoRosie really fail to make their mark here. The album is little more than faux “windy-road” style blues that lacks any sort of dynamism or substantial contour. The whimsical, instrumentally new-fangled vocal switch-off between the Casady sisters is rather erratic and inept. The whole time that I listened to Noah’s Ark, I couldn’t help myself from fantasizing about a small-town pageant featuring the industry’s best of the best folk revivalists…but suffice to say, Joanna Newsom won.

- Rhyannon Rodriguez