CocoRosie - Maison de Mon Rêve (CD)

All Music Guide

An enchanting debut, CocoRosie's La Maison de Mon Reve is a dreamy yet challenging confection of found sounds, folk blues, triphop, girlish pop and experimental recording and production techniques. The Casady sisters' breathy, slightly different but equally lovely vocals circle each other atop delicately plucked and strummed acoustic guitars, chirping birds and fractured beats, making for a sound that is hard to define outside of its own beauty and creativity. A strong Billie Holiday influence colors the sisters' vocals, particularly on La Maison de Mon Reve's most accessible songs, but even then, CocoRosie isn't so much aping Lady Day as it is invoking her style in unique ways. Layers of crickets, birds, pianos and intensely sweet backing vocals make "By Your Side" an unusually intimate and spontaneoussounding love song (and that's not even counting lyrics like "And it's nearly midnight / And all I want with my life / Is to be a housewife"). "Butterscotch" mixes ethereal sensuality with a mischievous sense of humor, and "Good Friday"'s whispered remembrances make it the most romantic moment on La Maison de Mon Reve, which as if it needed any more romance was recorded in Paris in the springtime. The unusual found sound samples and percussion that pepper the album give it a uniquely immediate, youarethere feel that is especially evocative on its more impressionistic tracks like "Candyland" and "Not For Sale." "Tahitian Rain Song" explores the most experimental edges of CocoRosie's music, with its samples of rain, Asiansounding flutes and distant vocals all cloaked in a layer of radio static; "Hatian Love Songs" adds a subtle hiphop influence to the duo's repertoire of sounds. As lovely and distinctive as La Maison de Mon Reve is, it's difficult to find fault with it. One tiny flaw appears on "Jesus Loves Me," a frayed, bluesy song inspired by the children's hymn; on this track, the soulfulness that makes the rest of the album sound so unique crosses over into a grating parody. Still, La Maison de Mon Reve is so bewitching that it's almost hard to believe that this is CocoRosie's first album along with their Touch Go brethren TV on the Radio, CocoRosie is one of the most sonically interesting bands of the 2000s.

- Heather Phares, All Music Guide