Rasputina

September 19 - 26, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Rasputina

THANKS FOR THE ETHER

(Columbia)
The brainchild of singer/composer/cellist Melora Creager, a classically trained Midwesterner who lent her string-bowing talents to Nirvana on their final tour, Rasputina come front-loaded with novelty appeal. There's the group's instrumentation -- three cellists and an occasional drumbeat. And then there are the outfits: the vintage collection of tightly laced Victorian undergarments that give Creager and her cohort (Julia Kent and, now, Agnieszka Rybska) the look of three anemic characters in search of an Ann Rice novel. Just think of it as chamber(maid)-pop.
The arrangements are sharp and sophisticated. The songs, which range from the spare pot-smoking lullaby "Sister Sleep" to the thorny yet ethereal vampiric love song "Transylvanian Concubine," owe more to goth-rockers like Siouxsie and the Banshees than to Haydn. And Creager's eerie fragile voice, especially on the burlesque "Why Don't You Do Right?" (a song popularized in the '40s by Peggy Lee), is reminiscent of Siouxsie Sioux. Rasputina work that sex appeal, all right -- three tightly corseted women sitting on stage with cellos between their legs know exactly what they're doing -- but they know what they're doing with the music, too.
-- Matt Ashare
(Rasputina open for Bob Mould this Tuesday, September 24, at Avalon.)