This wednesday Cocorosie were playing the third time in the Kulturfabrik and it was nice to see them back in Luxembourg. I saw them on their first concert in the KUFA and I really enjoyed it back than. The concert they played the 19th of may was nice, was interesting, but it was far from touching me like the first one I saw. I’m not the great music expert and already the fact that I write in the first person wants to underline that I share a personal experience and reflection and don’t claim to offer you here an music expert review.

What striked me most on that concert was not anymore their music or their performance on the scene, the two elements that impressed me on the first concert I saw of them, but the projections. So the following review will be mainly about reflecting on the audiovisual concept of the latest Cocorosie show.

“They have good projections”, said a friend in the beginning of their show and at the end she said “they became very irritating”. Indeed, from the third song on, the projections became a permanent contrast program between beauty and disgust, between good and evil, between nature and culture. Full of spiritual symbols in the large sense and besides symbols showing mostly nature and children in concrete, non-manipulated picture. But the purity of nature and the children got again and again destroyed, turned to images that provoked disgust in the stomach of the spectator. If I continue with my subjective interpretation and amateur music expertise I would say that there music was the same game. The angel vs. the bad boy. The two sisters playing again this two roles, as they did with great success on their first concert I saw, but this time it was less strong even that it was still there. Also the three male musicians contributed to a new setting and also a very different live performance. They were for sure a great musical contribution to the concert and balanced partly what was missing from the two sisters. I guess in terms of musical quality it was a very good performance by all of them, but besides the two “old” songs and the one or the other new one the music missed to really engage and touch. Maybe I’m just to rational and focused on messages, but I also really wondered why to pass symbols of religions, of the nazi regime and of the dollar on the screen if you don’ have any message? Why use symbols that are full of messages if you don’t have any? Is that politics as pop-culture? Because in the interview we had with Cocorosie before the concert they literally had nothing to say about the question if they have any message or political statement in the large sense. In times where conspiration theories are especially popular throughout the internet and seems to be part of the “Zeitgeist” (referring to one of the films that is one of the most popular conspiration medium) I wonder if they are honest about themselves having a message or not. Not having a message is anyway also having a message. Not making it transparent and conscious can be as manipulating as the “system” that is often simplified in a conspiration. This, I think, is anti-emancipatory, it make people feel powerless, without influence, because everything is a big controlled one that I personally can’t act upon. But I can and you too.