There are very few bands that could turn EartH Hall into a sanctuary of the uncanny. But CocoRosie aren’t most bands. What unfolded in Hackney was a séance of sound, a rippling, sacred collision of the gossamer and the guttural, of lamentations and lullabies. Sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady summoned memories, fears, ghosts, and uncertain futures. They invited the audience to their almost private, otherworldly dreamscape and for nearly two hours, we stayed willingly bewitched.
They opened the show with ‘Witch Hunt’, an allegorical punch in the gut and a defiant call to action. “Free Palestine!” echoed through the chorus: this was not only going to be poetic, painful, and beautifully strange, but political, too.
CocoRosie’s music has always been defiant. Live, that resistance becomes visceral. Genre is a map they have long since crumpled, set ablaze, and danced in the ashes of. Folk bleeding into hip-hop, opera colliding with lo-fi beats, experimental textures framing personal storytelling, their performance resembled a surrealist cabaret where violins, cello, theremin, and hydrophone, they all whispered secrets. To the untrained ear, their records can feel idiosyncratic but seeing it in person, it all made sudden, cosmic sense. There is a method to this funeral for innocence as each sound, no matter how jarring, has a thoughtfully curated place. Their setlist drew from across their vast discography, spotlighting their newest release, Little Death Wishes, while the eerie toy instruments harked back to the haunted intimacy of their debut, La Maison the Mon Rêve.
At the heart of the sisters’ performance lies a deep and unsettling truth. CocoRosie aren’t afraid to expose the rot beneath the surface:
We kill girls, we cunt stitch / We chop tits for profit / We cut trees, we kill bees / We cause pain and violence
Bianca spit into the mic, as if purging the world’s collective sins. And yet, there are glimmers of liberation:
I’d rather be rainwashed / Than brainwashed / Let’s all play in the rain / And be free again
Their songs often tease release but stop just short—there’s a deliberate anticlimax, a refusal to offer resolution, like a knife in a wound that’s twisted but never pulled out. Bianca and Sierra leave the audience hanging because the feelings of unresolved pain, transformation, and wonder are all part of the point.
Interaction with the crowd was kept to a minimum, as the evening felt more like an invitation to feel than a gig. Stepping into a fractured fairytale, equal parts unease and rapture, the sisters held a kaleidoscope to my heart, turning slowly, and casting fragments of myself into unexpected shapes. With every shift, a new side came into view: the outline of a childhood memory, the ringing of an abandoned dream, a faint voice that keeps whispering you’re not enough. Their music bent anguish, mystery, and absurdity, into patterns that somehow felt whole. This wasn’t just one of the best live shows I’ve witnessed, but also a dream I wasn’t aware I was carrying, and now can’t quite shake the feeling of.
Opening for CocoRosie is no easy feat, but Argentinian Maia Kalwill brought a sunlit charm to the stage that felt instantly disarming. There was a glimmer of Almost Famous’s Penny Lane in her look and demeanor: romantic, nostalgic, glowing with understated confidence. Her music carried a certain solar energy, warm and vulnerable, but on a Tuesday evening in Hackney, without the support of a full band, that warmth didn’t always manage to fill the room. Still, Kalwill radiated a youthful magnetism: something fragile, compelling, and impossible to ignore. Her electropop set felt full of potential and offered the perfect soft prelude before CocoRosie took the stage.
