In front of the eighth album of cocorosies, Little Death Wishesone thing is clear: Bianca and Sierra Casady have never been afraid of walking on the edge of excess. For over twenty years the very concept of independent music have disassembled and reassembled, moving between folk, electronics and experimentation with the naturalness of those who do not belong to any scene, except for their own.
Still, their journey has never been linear. After an adolescence lived in different cities, between colleges and forced distances, the sisters found themselves almost by chance in Paris in 2003, after years of separation. From that meeting a creative urgency was born: closed in the bathroom of the Sierra apartment, the place with the best acoustics available, have given birth to a musical universe that since then has never stopped expanding.
Little Death Wishes It is a journey through human fragility and the wounds of love, a collision of pop symbols and baroque visions that challenges time and fashions. But what does cocorosias mean today? How do you keep a project so stubbornly out of the patterns alive? In this interview, Bianca and Sierra tell us about their artistic alchemy, the difficulties of being understood and how, after two decades, they continue to deal with themselves and with their history through art.
“We are a Bricolage of pop culture.” Your words. What do you mean?
White: We have always seen our music as a collage, just like we do with visual art. Our style is also a collage. There is often a collision of genres, sometimes even in the rhythms, with different musical signatures that overlap. We work more and more with what we have available, cutting and reworking existing elements, samples of different eras, creating a sort of journey through sound time. It is a bit of a trial of the Frankenstein: I create chaos and Sierra gives it a structure, model and makes sense of it. Thus, something new and original emerges from this disorder.
Sierra: This is precisely the aspect that fascinates us: the fact that from a chaos apparently without form we can derive a new narrative. Music is like a assembly process, where each fragment has its own story, and when you put these fragments together, create something you would never have imagined at the beginning.
You said that real collages are also made. How important are other art forms in your music? Obviously I think of the theater and your experience with dance.
Sierra: There is always a connection between our music and other artistic forms. Often, when we compose, we think of visual images. For example, I need to think of a song as if it were a movie, with a well -defined landscape. Each of our songs exists in a specific place, even if imaginary.
White: We do not collaborate much with other contemporary artists, but our process is always an intertwining between image and text. Theater is what comes most natural to us. We have never been interested in the musical, but we have always felt comfortable in the theatrical context. In a sense, Cocorosie is moving more and more in that direction.
Sierra: Our relationship with pop, on the other hand, is almost ironic. For us pop is a sort of restriction, because we are naturally anti-pop. But when we try to get closer to that world – even if it is impossible for us – something interesting always happens. It is like a goal that we never reach, but we have fun playing with it.
What makes you anti-pop?
White: It is not a choice, it is simply our nature. Even when we try to get closer to pop, something strange comes out. It is as if he never really could enter the world that pop represents. Our music is just a reflection of what we are, without forcing.
A recurring feature of your sound is the use of toy tools. Do Jung and Freud have to do with it or is it just music?
Sierra: At the beginning we were not particularly selective on the instruments, we did not look for a precise sound. We were interested in hip hop and we realized that even in that genre we use what you have available. So, by chance, we found sound toys. The lack of real tools led us to experiment with small objects that made particular sounds.
White: And in that process we discovered something very nostalgic, capable of evoking childhood memories and strange sensations. The contrast between the beatbox and these “toys” noises created something unique and we let ourselves be transported. It was a random discovery, but it became a kind of sound addiction.
In 2024 the twenty years of your first album appeared The Maison de Mon Rêve. What do you remember from that period? And what do you think you have changed more in these twenty years of career?
White: At the time it was like being possessed by something. We didn't talk much about plans or intentions. We didn't even intend to make an album or form a band. But there was an energy that guided us, as if everything was already written. If I look back, it seems that we had a precise strategy, but in reality everything happened in a very spontaneous way.
Sierra: We recorded on a four tracks, Sierra mixed everything, and the thing that strikes me most is the way the sounds were mixed: the toy tools were treated as real tools, not as contour elements. Over time, our approach has changed, but in a certain sense, with this eighth disc, we have returned to the origins: simple tools, minimal equipment, only the two of us and what we have around.
White: There was a period when we worked in larger studies, with musicians, but now we have returned to this more intimate and spontaneous process. And it's beautiful, it makes us feel as if we had found our original spirit.
Your musical project was born from your particular bond of sisters found. Your relationship is enclosed in a very significant song of this album, that is Least I have youin which it is impossible not to read your story between the lines.
Sierra: I wrote the refrain when we weren't together. I was probably trying to recreate our distance bond. The song is a collage of stories. It speaks of lost loves, disappointment, anger, but also of what remains after the disaster. And certainly he also speaks of us, and the fact that we had a childhood … let's say unique.
If you have to talk to someone who like you feel unique, perhaps because of a family disaster or difficult experiences, what would you say to these people, those young people who are experiencing similar situations?
Sierra: I think having a creative outlet in artistic expression is probably the most important thing. Being able to objectify the experience and then elaborate it over time is the most powerful tool we have. We intertwine many of the family tragedies in our art, and often these are transformed into something different, something that helps us to take control of the narrative.
White: So, whether you feel an artist or not, I would say that it is through the writing of a diary, the composition of songs or painting, it is essential to bring out what you have inside. Then, when you look at your experience from the outside, you can establish a new relationship with that story, you can change it, and so you can also take control of what happened to you.
This record will follow a tour that will also arrive in Italy. Twenty years ago in the interviews you said that Italy was your priority because even then you had a small group of fans. Is this still the case? And what should we expect from the tour?
White: Italy has always been important for us. We were there for the first time as teenagers and we have a special bond with Umbria, where we lived for a short time. Italian fans are full of heart and sweetness, it is always nice to return. The tour will be a journey through these twenty years of music. We will play the new album, but as always we will let the songs change live. Our goal is to bring the most delicate sounds of cocorosies on stage, together with the most powerful beats, mixing rare tools, electronics and sound toys. It will be an exciting experiment.
You have lived in Umbria, France, now called respectively by Texas and California. In general you have lived in many different places, both during your childhood and following the birth of the Cocorosie project. Is there any place to which you feel more tied or nobody in particular?
White: Well, the answer is simple. We moved a lot during childhood, so we don't feel particularly linked to many places and not even to the United States. There is a sort of alien sensation everywhere, but at the same time we learned to feel at home everywhere.
Always twenty years ago, you said that your music was like “the center of the sea at sunset”. Would you describe it still like this?
Sierra: Ah yes? Oh mom … well, now we would say that it is more like a family barbecue, with all the generations present, each with their own wounds, but all together.
I would say better.
White: Come on, the less bad, at the time we didn't even know what we were doing. We were strange and often misunderstood. Now we are just a little less strange, but we have learned to explain ourselves a little.
