CocoRosie Quiets Yugong Yishan

When I was ten years old I saw the film The Fifth Element, and while there were many aspects of that film that impacted my young, impressionable mind (that rubber orange accessory fitted around Milla Jovovich’s perfect breasts and that Luke Perry cameo notwithstanding), it was the concert by the Diva that moved me.

You know what I’m talking about. Bruce Willis has to find the bricks, the bricks representing the elements that will stop Gary Oldman’s nefarious duck machine creatures from taking over the universe. While on the intergalactic cruise with Chris Tucker, he’s told he needs to meet The Diva, and the next thing we know we’re in the audience for her sold-out concert. She’s tentacled, blue, and rife with a stunning vulnerability. You don’t understand a damn thing she’s singing because it’s in some alien language, but you don’t care. Her arias are gorgeous. They soar. It’s viscerally beautiful, and unlike anything you’ve seen or heard before and you know what you’ve experienced is something that can never be accurately described to people. You just had to be there.

So now that I’ve acknowledged the futility of my own review of last night’s CocoRosie show, I’d like to thank Sierra “Rosie” for making this Fifth Element comparison possible. On a very important, cosmic level she seemed to have had the Diva spirit in mind as painted her lovely face in glitter and she selected her outfit: that tight, jaw-dropping blue body suit. And not only can she usher a song from something bold and operatic into a hip-hop breakdown. She can really dance. Just like the Diva.

Only Rosie also slays the harp.

Sister Bianca “Coco” provided the perfect compliment, with her high-pitched, babyish spoken word rejoinders, performing on an endless collection of flutes. Haunting lullabies plunked away at the white baby grand piano, mingled with percussion, as well as some white dude pssssh-ing as the beat box, CocoRosie managed to successfully to sculpt an identity out of what would otherwise be random, unrelated musical elements. They performed two tight sets (white dude beat-boxing entertained us during the set break) and two encores. Major bonus points for that. I should also note that Rosie could hardly finish a song before breaking out into a huge smile and saying Xie Xie or Thank You.

Gracious, gorgeous, CocoRosie, I say you can come back and mesmerize us anytime. Even Beijing scenesters that couldn’t keep quiet for Andrew Bird were silenced.