Rasputina have been described as ‘perhaps the world’s only punk-prog-heavy-metal cello band’, which is a pretty wide ranging, but accurate description of their music. Melora Creagor, cellist/lead singer is the driving force behind Rasputina, and in her previous band had supported the Pixies, Belly and Throwing Muses, and has toured with Nirvana as a cellist on their In Utero tour. After this tour the idea came to Creagor to create an electric cello choir, with one condition – no guitars allowed, although on this record cunningly played and recorded cello is able to replicate the sound (in particular on ‘Draconian Crackdown). ‘Oh Perilous World’ is a concept album ‘of Mary Todd Lincoln as Queen of Florida, with her blimp armies having attacked Pitcairn Island, where Fletcher Christian’s son Thursday emerges as a resistance icon’, and one song ‘Choose Me for Champion’ is a rough translation of an Osama Bin Laden speech. Sadly the album doesn’t quite live up to this, although very good in parts (‘Incident in A Medical Centre’, ‘Child Soldier Rebellion’ and ‘We Stay Behind’), the constant need for narrative structure makes it seem that the song and the music are of less importance than getting the story across. However, Creagor has a good voice sounding in places like Joanna Newsom, Bjork or Tanya Donnelly, which combined with the ‘chamber-rock’ sound of the band leads, in places, to a very interesting album.
