Rasputina : Releases >>
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Oh Perilous World >>
Oh Perilous World is the sixth release by Rasputina, a singularly inventive outfit led by Melora Creager. A cellist herself, she creates a frontline of multiple cellos. Eschewing the faux-classical shenanigans of the Electric Light Orchestra, she welds the instruments with sensibilities that evoke everyone from Van Dyke Parks to Tom Waits. The album opens with the lines "In the spring of 1315 there began an era of unpredictable weather. It did not lift until 1851. You remember 1816 as the year without a summer." The dozen songs address the set's title with a mix of journalism and poetry. Creager draws directly from the daily news, but rather than paddling about in simple reportage, she uses phrases and ideas as starting points for her rich and multifaceted results. She moves easily from ballads laced with dulcimers to spiky rockers sporting fuzzed cellos and propulsive drums. The arrangements, which sometimes include layered vocal choruses, utilize complexity with natural grace. --David Greenberger
A Radical Recital >>
Thanks for the Ether >>
My Fever Broke >>
Frustration Plantation >>
How We Quit the Forest >>
You can litmus-test yourself with the name alone. If you don't appreciate the stained-glass humor of a trio of corseted female cellists warping the moniker of the Mad Monk, chances are you're going to despise the creepy, Gothic-edged sonatas on this sophomore CD, easily one of the year's most curious releases. Get the gag? Good. You're in for one hell of a strange sonic trip, with campy bandleader Melora Creager as your wisecracking guide. "Strange" as in a nimble plucking of Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" chestnut. Or an intensely fiddled send up of the DeBeers jewelry commercial, "Diamond Mind," with Creager commanding: "I want that diamond!/I want that thing!/A tennis bracelet, a ring!" Elsewhere, the disc is alternately jarring ("LeechWife," "Olde HeadBoard") and gentle ("Rose K," "Herb Girls of Birkenau"). Creager's subject matter gets downright sinister at times. Where else can you hear yarns concerning the ancient medical practice of leech application? Heel to shovel, Creager digs deep into the catacombs of the surreal until you have no choice but to dig Rasputina. --Tom Lanham
The Lost & Found >>
The natural result of your fave cello-rock trio meeting up in a dark alley with Page, Plant, Fogerty, Waters, Gilmour, Benatar, Manson, Reed and Cale! Instinct. 2003.
Oh Perilous World >>
Oh Perilous World is the sixth release by Rasputina, a singularly inventive outfit led by Melora Creager. A cellist herself, she creates a frontline of multiple cellos. Eschewing the faux-classical shenanigans of the Electric Light Orchestra, she welds the instruments with sensibilities that evoke everyone from Van Dyke Parks to Tom Waits. The album opens with the lines "In the spring of 1315 there began an era of unpredictable weather. It did not lift until 1851. You remember 1816 as the year without a summer." The dozen songs address the set's title with a mix of journalism and poetry. Creager draws directly from the daily news, but rather than paddling about in simple reportage, she uses phrases and ideas as starting points for her rich and multifaceted results. She moves easily from ballads laced with dulcimers to spiky rockers sporting fuzzed cellos and propulsive drums. The arrangements, which sometimes include layered vocal choruses, utilize complexity with natural grace. --David Greenberger
Thanks for the Ether >>
Transylvanian Regurgitations >>
