Pitchfork

There's nothing wrong with superficiality. The theatrical arts are all about poses. Office politics in America practically mandate that employees wear a glossy veneer to hide their true, often contemptuous feelings for each other. Heck, even us Pitchfork writers aren't entirely genuine: We don't actually like reviewing music; most of us are just in it for the sex.

For musicians with star ambitions, a well-practiced public facade is an evil necessity; it's what divides mainstream from underground. The shortest (if not only) route to pop stardom is to lube-up and fake your way through the capricious and unapologetic record industry gauntlet. Play your public relations cards right, and you may one day earn an outside shot at winning a contract with a major label subdivision. From there, you're at the mercy of American teenagers.

And yet, there are those who proudly wear the makeup but manage to smuggle some illegal substance underneath. Björk, Beck, and the Smashing Pumpkins all had at least one great album to their credit in the last decade that were nothing if not MTV-ready. CocoRosie, a Parisian vocal duo comprised of sisters Sierra and Bianca Cassidy, may one day be such a group. Judging by their promotional 8x10s, in which the sisters purse for the camera doused in copious amounts of Cabaret-style rouge and mascara, they've already got the makeup part down pat.

Brace yourself for a high school French reprise: CocoRosie have a verifiable case of Francophilia. La Maison de Mon Reve translates literally to "the house of my dream," and the title is just the beginning: The album was recorded in Paris in the springtime, and beams with all the lazy romanticism of an unemployed Upper East-Sider on expat life-delay. But never mind the superficial reasons for disliking the Cassidy sisters; not just any bored globetrotters could pull something this elegant and sonically intriguing out of their trust-funded asses.

Musically speaking, La Maison de Mon Reve is an ingratiating album that suffers only from its sometimes overbearing affectation. The familial duo have garnered vast acclaim for their effortless melding of blues and hip-hop, a putatively groundbreaking bridge that CocoRosie are far from the first to cross. Relatively speaking, blues and hip-hop share a lot in common; crooning fragile melodies over boombox beats isn't going to cure cancer, now or ever. In fact, what CocoRosie have done with original source material on La Maison de Mon Reve is essentially what Danger Mouse attempted to do with existing music on his lauded The Grey Album: They've overdubbed two styles of music, generationally removed but deceptively similar, and the result is closer to the mean of its parts than the sum.

That doesn't stop the Cassidy sisters from crooning unabashedly within the cozy walls of this cold-water flat. On paper, some of the lyrics are doggone cringe-worthy, but lines like, "I fell in love with you/ Just because the sky turned from grey to blue," and, "All I want with my life/ Is to be a housewife," are delivered passionately enough to slide by unnoticed. The particularly guileless "By Your Side" and "Butterscotch" are even more impressive for their ability to transcend their shortcomings.

Like any truly cosmopolitan city, La Maison de Mon Reve draws from a rich past of diffuse influences while simultaneously seeking to make use of modern resources. That much is apparent from the opening cut, "Terrible Angels", a bucolic blues paean that slyly incorporates sporadic synth blips and what sounds like the metallic squeal of a rusted swingset. Delta blues is a prominent influence throughout the album, and the backwater vocals are coolly affected and instantly appealing. Unfortunately, the Cassidys' entreaties wear thin over repeated listens. Both sisters possess the type of coy yet wracked and powerful voice that has vaulted artists like Fiona Apple and Nelly Furtado to stardom, even while the band's roots are planted in the indie loam, right beside their Touch & Go compatriots TV on the Radio.

A lot of words have been wasted trying pigeonhole this album into a genre, and the general consensus seems to be that La Maison de Mon Reve is impossible to define outside its own Bohemian splendor. If you're trapped in a Parisian idyll, maybe, but here in suburbia, the album is about as romantic as a clod of freshly mown grass. CocoRosie are transparent and derivative, yet immensely promising. If they can overcome the insular boundaries of their make-believe world, they might one day produced something utterly spectacular. But they're in no hurry; was a woman who thought she was well-dressed ever cold?