Their huge cult following notwithstanding, “freak folk” sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady – aka CocoRosie – are notorious for dividing the opinions of listeners. Their spooky odd-pop finds Sierra playing the harp and using her operatic training, while her sister plays children’s toys (you read it right), and sings like a scary baby. Indeed some listeners are likely to be put off before they even press play by the album’s artwork, which wins the dubious accolade of being even worse than that of 2005’s Noah’s Ark.
Opening with ‘Trinity’s Crying’, a slow electro-acoustic fusion, Grey Oceans shows the band as having moved even further into jazz and hip-hop. ‘The Undertaker’ is an arrangement centred around a recording of the Casadys’ mother singing in her native Cherokee, and ‘R.I.P. Burn Face’ once again shows off the sisters’ obsession with childhood and fairy language over atmospheric samples. The album’s standout track is ‘Hopscotch’, a bizarre offering in which they act as a bipolar vaudeville double act, as the song’s dubstep honky-tonk choruses bookend nostalgic, weepy verses.
In spite of its otherwordly charms, this is an average effort from a duo who are well-known for promoting their eccentricity and willingness to push boundaries. Grey Oceans is unlikely to win them any new listeners.