CocoRosie (NNF10 13/05)

The date is 13/05. The time is 10.30 pm. The setting is ... unusual. We're at Norfolk&Norwich Festival '10, inside the whimsically-titled spiegeltent - a travelling wooden conception entirely reminiscent of a Victorian circus. Inside, everyone's in the spirit - the workers are in costume, the audience are glancing around appreciatively, and the ambiance is one of shared revelry and anticipation.

There are no support acts to introduce the main theatrics, which only adds to the surreality of the night. Instead, Bianca and Sierra Casady - otherwise known as CocoRosie - attended by keyboarders and a beatboxer, walk onto the stage and begin the set. The stage itself is overtly abnormal - on a table to the side is a careful collection of care-worn children's musical toys. These, it later unfolds, are the bands instruments, as much as Sierra's harp and Bianca's clarinet. The toys set the scene for what will be undoubtedly an engaging and mesmerising ninety minutes.

Though the crowd is an interesting if diverse mix of ages (and, evidently, musical tastes), there is at least one common factor between us: total immersion in the antics on stage. Indeed, the stage is a clusterfuck, a myriad of colours and shapes and images; behind the band (engaging in themselves, donning makeshift costumes and facial decoration) plays a video of crashing waves, of people, of eyes, of nature. The visual scenes are entirely relevent; as the track 'Grey Oceans' comes to an end, soft piano notes fading into nothingness, behind the two girls is framed slowly receding waves. Frankly, it's stunning. This evening - I refrain from referring to it as the proverbial gig: it's so much more - is as much a treat for the eyes as it is for the ears. And this is an impressive claim, because the music is so eccentrically, fantastically marvellous. The majority of songs are taken from the band's 2010 album Grey Oceans, a mish-mash of genre-defying tracks that centre on the theme of twilight (dawn and dusk, not vampires; nothing so generic). Though the album is new, unheard by most of the audience, all of us are moving languidly to CocoRosie's surreal sound - ranging from soft and tinkly, to electronically pulsating, and even to childishly jolly (in their aptly-named 'Hopskotch', a song that inspires the two girls to play an impromptu game of patty-cake). Grey Oceans, fourth album of sibling-duo CocoRosie, combines operatic arias and poetic rap; musically, the girls have progressed since La Maison de Mon Reve (2004), but they have also managed to cling to their original sound, the sound that made them so outrageous - and such a hot topic between alternative-music connoisseurs - when they made their debut.

When we leave the spiegeltent, we are buzzing from the narcotic effects of the night we have experienced. We do not stop commending the band and their performance until we get home. It is a night over which we will continually reminisce. And if that isn't the sign of a good concert, I don't know what is.