À propos
It’s practically become a rite : once Cock Robin has wrapped up an album, they subject it to what they call the « deserttest », which involves playing it, preferably on their favorite vintage ghetto blaster, letting it echo within the vastness of nearby Joshua Tree National Park, east of Los Angele. “If the music sounds right among the rocks and stars,… then we’ve done well!” explains Peter Kingsbery with a smile. It is also where Anna LaCazio, his partner in Cock Robin has been living for the past twelve years. The legendary tandem are at it once again with their new opus, Songs from a bell tower, Cock Robin’s 6th album, no doubt the richest and most masterful in a career that has already spanned over two decades.
Nobody has forgotten their hits such as When your heart is weak, The promise you made and Just around the corner, the alchemy of the two voices interweaving throughout the melodies brimming with lyrical sensuality. After a 16-years separation, Peter and Anna picked up where they left off with their album “I Don’t Want to Save The World in 2006”. “Why?” “because the time was right, and our urge to sing together was back, stronger than ever” as Peter neatly put it. When they broke up, Anna weary of ceaseless touring and the invasion of her private life, had decided to get the hell out of show business. Peter continued on making four solo albums marked by one major success with the song Only the very best, from the English-language version of Michel Berger’s musical Starmania. Since their 2006 album, followed by two European tours and a live record, the group is back with eleven original tracks which hover between symphonic pop and ballads that rock, in which the duo’s timeless magical charm remains intact. All written, composed, performed and arranged by Peter Kingsbery in his home studio in Hermosa Beach California, with contributions from drummer Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson) and French guitarist Yannick Chouillet.
A record that touches on love and more importantly, the hopes and fears of life. “I composed most of the songs on a Hammond organ inherited from my aunt who recently passed away” explained Peter. I was also thinking of my favorite album by Joni Mitchell, Hejira, with the photo on the inside cover where she’s skating on a frozen lake, really deep, unreal…”
Deep and unreal, among the strings horn and brass sections keyboards, you could well say that of Songs from a bell tower, with the mingling of Peter and Anna’s vocals. Now and then talks of moving on, each day feeling better and stronger, Grand evokes reincarnation as a second chance for falling in love, Checkered Past recounts a friend’s coming out after 20 years of marriage, Part of your tribe rails against the blasé cynicism of certain social sets, Janis describes that self-centered pity triggered by tragedy striking other, A natural affair imagines the surprise of a new-born child discovering the solitude of grown-ups.
And Extraordinary thing, one of the magnificent vocal duos, is a tender allusion to the feelings linking the two artists.
Peter Kingsbery, testifying to the human soul “I am always touched and inspired by what happens to those around me. When we started out as a group, my relationship with Anna influenced many of my lyrics. It still does, but now we feel much freer, comfortable with one another, we love being together, making music, travelling together.” And Cock Robin will be touring Europe in early 2011, with a concert at the Bataclan in Paris, on 29 January. In the meantime, Songs from a bell tower will have passed the band’s notorious test. But you don’t have to get lost in the desert to appreciate its full beauty.
Nobody has forgotten their hits such as When your heart is weak, The promise you made and Just around the corner, the alchemy of the two voices interweaving throughout the melodies brimming with lyrical sensuality. After a 16-years separation, Peter and Anna picked up where they left off with their album “I Don’t Want to Save The World in 2006”. “Why?” “because the time was right, and our urge to sing together was back, stronger than ever” as Peter neatly put it. When they broke up, Anna weary of ceaseless touring and the invasion of her private life, had decided to get the hell out of show business. Peter continued on making four solo albums marked by one major success with the song Only the very best, from the English-language version of Michel Berger’s musical Starmania. Since their 2006 album, followed by two European tours and a live record, the group is back with eleven original tracks which hover between symphonic pop and ballads that rock, in which the duo’s timeless magical charm remains intact. All written, composed, performed and arranged by Peter Kingsbery in his home studio in Hermosa Beach California, with contributions from drummer Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson) and French guitarist Yannick Chouillet.
A record that touches on love and more importantly, the hopes and fears of life. “I composed most of the songs on a Hammond organ inherited from my aunt who recently passed away” explained Peter. I was also thinking of my favorite album by Joni Mitchell, Hejira, with the photo on the inside cover where she’s skating on a frozen lake, really deep, unreal…”
Deep and unreal, among the strings horn and brass sections keyboards, you could well say that of Songs from a bell tower, with the mingling of Peter and Anna’s vocals. Now and then talks of moving on, each day feeling better and stronger, Grand evokes reincarnation as a second chance for falling in love, Checkered Past recounts a friend’s coming out after 20 years of marriage, Part of your tribe rails against the blasé cynicism of certain social sets, Janis describes that self-centered pity triggered by tragedy striking other, A natural affair imagines the surprise of a new-born child discovering the solitude of grown-ups.
And Extraordinary thing, one of the magnificent vocal duos, is a tender allusion to the feelings linking the two artists.
Peter Kingsbery, testifying to the human soul “I am always touched and inspired by what happens to those around me. When we started out as a group, my relationship with Anna influenced many of my lyrics. It still does, but now we feel much freer, comfortable with one another, we love being together, making music, travelling together.” And Cock Robin will be touring Europe in early 2011, with a concert at the Bataclan in Paris, on 29 January. In the meantime, Songs from a bell tower will have passed the band’s notorious test. But you don’t have to get lost in the desert to appreciate its full beauty.
