My ears have been hungry this year, and hard to satiate. That’s obvious if you’re a longtime Resonator-er (Resonate-er? Something like that. Name yourself, Res fans! We will not repress your devotion with an unwittingly levied title!), as the amount of “ohmahGAWD you gotta hear this” drooling, slobbering gushy attempts at not-journalism. At least, not from me. In fact, I daresay that a good portion of my stuff this year has been cold and clinical at best, an attempt to incite Hacks to breakdancefight me more oft than not.

To my hungry, starved soul, too over-fed on that old new Lismore E.P. and Neon Bible to choke out a word or two on how awesome the new Apparat is, a random review of the new CocoRosie album, a band I’d never listened to but whose new album, Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, caused Peefork to destroy them and Antony Hegarty to rise like Enkil from his stone slumber and very, very nicely (and probably in a trilling register) take the reviewer apart. This, an album I’d had described to me by a friend as “Psapp on crack” (and that was supposed to be a bad thing), that caused Mr. Nice Muumuu to raise his alabaster hand and firmly slap the shit out of the resident gods of indie rock gush, had to be mine. Apparently the CocoRosie story (two estranged French sisters who found each other via collaborative music)’s now the stuff of legendary truthiness, the sort of story that gets passed around by kids in jeans with haircut to one another in the hushed tones usually reversed for Jack White and, well, any damn thing Patrick Wolf or Lily Allen blog about. Whatever the serious glue between the two girls, the comparison to Psapp in regards to childhood-conjuring found sounds being used to create a mood both nostalgic and disconcerting is pretty spot-on.

That’s where the comparisons end, though. Realize that Ghosthorse is my first CocoRosie album, and I’ve been told it’s the most accessible. However, their jerky use of hip-hop rhythm, samples, programming, and sing/rapping as a counterpoint to the juxtaposition of painful and then childlike lyrical imagery…all of this is just…

It’s fucking beautiful, is what it is.

It’s the sort of album that wouldn’t necessarily be consumable by just anyone (in fact, our friends at Wordsmiths Books, with whom we’re co-sponsoring that Lismore show in Decatur, GA on the 29th of June, compared it, quite fittingly, to a Tao Linn novel), but for those who “get it” (though I loathe the elitism that’ll entice, it’s truly either a all-or-nothing sort of album), it’s an emotional rollercoaster.

CocoRosie: Rainbow Warriors

The first track on Ghosthorse, and thusly the first CocoRosie song I ever heard (and recently, at that)-it perfectly encapsulates the childlike and the profane that they love so much, behind a highly accessible (and…gasp!…danceable), steady drum machine.

CocoRosie: Werewolf

This. Song.

Oh, man…this song. This is the reason for this post. This is a must-listen, if only just once. “Werewolf” is the sort of song that you don’t want to have hypnotize you, because as you hum along it’ll slowly break you apart, and it’s been doing so to me for days now. A steady, fuzzy skip-hop underscores a chorus begging for freedom bookending a song wrapping the loss of childhood, unspeakable paternal abuse and blame transferal:

I don’t mean to close the door
But for the record my heart is sore
You blew through me like bullet holes
Left stains on my sheets and stains on my soul
You left me broke down begging for change
Had to catch a ride with a man who’s deranged
He had your hands and my father’s face
Another western vampire
Different time same place

In short, CocoRosie’s Ghosthorse is nearly too much of an album for me to take-and so it’s what I’ve been begging for. While I await another moment that will incite me to blather, riot, or generally be the hyperactive music freak that, oh, another Knife album would probably bring, I’m going to delve hardcore-style into the CocoRosie back catalog. We’ll see what beauty I unearth.