It was one of those moments when you realize a person you thought you knew well was capable of being someone else entirely. It’s a frighteningly confusing experience to say the least, and in the case of Cibelle, Brazillian songstress and opener for CocoRosie, I was convinced who I saw on stage that night wasn’t her at all. The night began like a dream of losing your self somewhere vaguely familiar, and in the end being led back home by two mystical goddesses.
Bear with me, kids.
Saddled by a gazebo of day-glow tulle and silver tinsel, Cibelle poured her pretty Portuguese voice into a mess of echo effects and samples, congesting the ballroom with a slippery noise that failed to do much more than mesmerize the young’uns and put the grown-ups to sleep. And yes, there were kids -- lots of them. They loved her. But what I heard from this woman was nothing like what I had heard from the Cibelle I knew. The Cibelle I knew was a spunky samba princess with golden vocals and a cool attitude -- not a woman suctioned into a tie-dye skin suit, swaying back and forth like Glinda the Good Witch meets spaced-out preschool teacher. The dream had turned into a nightmare.
I tried to make peace by imagining her performing on the set of "Wizard of Oz" or at a preschool, but to no avail. My senses were being punished: any evidence of samba was drowned by reverb; the vibrato of her voice barely spiked over the tidal wave of echo effects; and on-stage Cibelle looked misplaced, like she pulled off the I-5 too early on her way to the Oregon Country Fair (which, by the way, is fabulous in its own right).
To my great relief, Cibelle, a Good Witch on a bad night, dissolved behind the curtains amidst a mixture of spastic applause and dazed silence, and I properly recovered at the bar with a gin and tonic in a short stint of waking-life (i.e. intermission). Moments passed, and the bubbly elixir adequately calmed my agitated nerves in time for CocoRosie to commence part two of the dream cycle.
A grand piano appeared stage-right, played by a glitter-bearded satyr, and a man with a drum set in his mouth stood stage-left, coughing up beats into a microphone when prompted by the two goddesses who seemed to know just when to mellow the oppressive boil of mystical glitter and rainbows. Bianca, cooling it off with baby-voiced trip-hop, and Sierra, amplifying the emotion with classically trained operatic vocals. Their spectacular blend of classic and contemporary musical styles is executed with such arresting force on-stage that in certain moments--particularly when Sierra hits a high note, closes her eyes, and lifts both hands to frame her face, summoning a downpour of joyful melancholy--it’s like, well… an opera, where regardless of dialogue, the actors are so explosively emotive that it moves the audience ineffably to tears.
Now, if the fans are a telling element of both the motives and the message of a given band, then CocoRosie represents and accepts a truly diverse, unified population. Sitting in front of me for the duration of the dream was a very hip looking lady in a beanie, Chucks, a vintage polo, and a wheelchair. To her right was a group of kids no older than twelve who danced and sang and held their hands up for every song. Behind me, the crowd was peppered with gay couples, embracing and smiling. Old, young, misfit, all colors, all sizes, decorated in body glitter, petticoats, and fairy wings thrived in the temporary safe haven, insulated from the pressures and lavish distractions of the un-enchanted world outside.
And CocoRosie, costumed in handmade Wee Willy Winkle inspired nightgowns, contrasting NYPD ball caps, drawstring Iron Maiden basketball shorts, and face paint, throwing homage to Cindy Lauper, Chopin, and Nina Simone all in one fantastical mélange of a performance, created an imaginative universe; a pedicab, if you will, out of the material world into the spiritual. CocoRosie impose mysteriously comforting dreams of ghosts, afterlife, and the inevitability of things falling apart on their listeners in a way that their albums alone cannot achieve – leading their euphoric followers benevolently through a universe flipped inside out.
