CocoRosie @ World Financial Plaza: Tiny Waves Of Shivers

Freak folk and urban poetry's worlds collided last night at the World Financial Plaza's Wintergarden. The always delightful duo, CocoRosie, joined forces with Urban Word NYC, a non-profit that provides free writing and performance opportunities to teens all across NYC.

As the story goes, CocoRosie's Bianca Cassidy was a member of Urban Word NYC some years ago, and has been trying to arrange an event like this since her departure. The result was an awe-inspiring, passionate and surreal 80-minute collaboration.

The teens' verses ranged in topic from body dysmorphia to racism, street life to sexuality confusion. The night opened with the kids reciting the lyrics to CocoRosie's 'South 2nd' while parading through the perimeter of the space, eventually meeting in front of the stage just in time for CocoRosie to immediately break into the tune in its original form.

As the evening progressed, the ratio for music to words was roughly 2 or 3 CocoRosie tunes for every poetic delivery. CocoRosie focused almost exclusively on their last two releases, Noah's Ark and this year's The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn (read my review of that album here). The band opened with the aforementioned 'South 2nd' and closed with a rousing rendition of (one of my favorite CocoRosie tracks) 'Werewolf'.

The gathering served as the culminating activity for Word Of Mouth: 'a multi-disciplinary festival which explores intersection where language and performance meet'. More info on Word Of Mouth can be found here on WFC's site. I'll surely be attending again for its next go-round.