Noah's Ark

Rating

Album: Noah's Ark
#	Song Title		Time
1)	K-Hole	More Info...
2)	Beautiful Boyz	More Info...
3)	South 2nd	More Info...
4)	Bear Hides And Buffalo	More Info...
5)	Tekno Love Song	More Info...
6)	The Sea Is Calm	More Info...
7)	Noah's Ark	More Info...
8)	Milk	More Info...
9)	Armageddon	More Info...
10)	Brazilian Sun	More Info...
11)	Bisounours	More Info...
12)	Honey Or Tar	More Info...

Performer Notes

CocoRosie: Bianca Casady, Sierra Casady.
Additional personnel: Devendra Banhart, Diane Cluck, Spleen, Gregory Rogove, Jana Hunter, Antony, Ardzen.
The sisters Casady set the weirdness bar awfully high on their homemade debut, LA MAISON DE MON REVE, but this inspired follow-up finds the bar ascended as the angels take it on the road, recording everywhere from barnyards to actual music studios. As usual, classically trained vocalist Sierra delivers the delirious operatic vocalizing and plays piano, dulcimer, and autoharp while Bianca coos like a 12-year old vampire Billie Holiday and makes percussive noise from computers and shakers with equal abandon.
The difference here is in the confidence, the polish, and the guest stars: Antony (of Antony & the Johnsons) singing and playing piano on the movingly transgressive "Beautiful Boyz," Devendra Banhart sampled from what sounds like an old scratchy 78 (actually a phoned-in vocal) on "Brazilian Sun," and French rapper Spleen laying it down on the intro of "Bisounours." There are also horses and cats ("Bear Hides & Buffalo"), and off-kilter tambourine and ambient, cricket-soaked fog on the old-timey "Armageddon." No sophomore slump this, if anything it's even weirder for all the added talent, flourishes, and polish.

Professional Reviews

Uncut (p.107) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[T]hey sound magnificently otherworldly....An exotic, quixotic alternative to the current climate of bloke-rock orthodoxy."

Magnet (p.91) - "The Casady sisters' voices whisper intimately, cheap drum machines back slow harp arpeggios, odd sounds surface and submerge."

The Wire (p.55) - "NOAH'S ARK retains their beautiful otherness while coming across as more focused and confident."

The Wire (p.45) - Included in The Wire's "2005 Rewind: 50 Records Of The Year."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[T]he sisters make merry with harps, light operatic descants and witchy shrieking....CocoRosie sound, blissfully, like no one else."