(Marathon Artists)
It’s 17 years since Bianca and Sierra Casady materialised like a fever dream of New York’s 00s freak-folk scene, a new, weird
American incarnation of Angela Carter’s Chance sisters, who recorded their debut album while drinking champagne in a bathtub, accompanied by kitchen implements and children’s toys. In that time, the siblings’ self-consciously naive collision of Billie Holiday-influenced blues croons, shonky hip-hop beats and found sound, sprinkled with Bianca’s bratty bohemian rap and Sierra’s
Paris Conservatoire-trained avant garde arias, mellowed into self-analytical, new-agey meandering, while the early drive to provoke (Jesus Loves Me, from their 2004 debut, La maison de mon rêve, deployed the N-word seemingly for shock value amid an infantile critique of religion; their second album’s cover sported an infuriatingly childlike daubing of a trio of fornicating unicorns vomiting rainbows) that made them so hard to humour subsided.
Their seventh album continues to exorcise family trauma, but is more memorable and structured than recent efforts. Restless pays tribute to their mother, who died during the album’s recording, with jaunty piano, jabs of distorted guitar and shimmery keys, while Burning Down the House is not a Talking Heads cover but a dark, dubby trip-hop treat that weaves accordion and harp amid rattling-bones percussion. Many tracks, such as High Road, with its dark, fairytale imagery, cawing crows and skittering beats, feel like a conscious return to core idiosyncrasies. As such, it’s a shame that the album overstays its welcome a little. As always, the Casady sisters are best in small, surreal doses.