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Rasputina’s cellorific rock has become a current affair
 Rasputina
Since 1992, Rasputina has functioned as an all-girl, all-cello duo-sometimes-trio that kicks out jams about Victorian and Civil War-era topics — and dons corsetry. Singer and first-chair cellist Creager founded the group in Brooklyn as a cello club of sorts, sometimes assembling up to nine ladies at a time.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but I wanted a whole mess of ladies playing cellos,” she says. As time passed, band members steadily came and went — other cellists, as well as drummers, who were largely regarded as “session guys.”
As a result, Rasputina had often seemed like a one-woman show over the
years, but Creager says she tried her best to keep the band together.
“All along, I tried to present an image of a group, even to the point
of having fictitious people credited on the record to present that
image. After a decade of that, I really grew tired of it.”
Meanwhile, through constant touring and steady album output,
Rasputina’s audience grew. Shows were often filled with an array of
fans, from so-sad goth kids to middle-aged classical music fans.
But as any good rock group should, Rasputina has evolved: Over the past three albums, drummer Jonathan TeBeest has been accepted as “one of the girls,” and rigid corsets are no longer du rigeur.
“Well, singing my best is more important than my ‘look,’ and I have to admit, I can’t sing as well with a corset,” Creager says.
The evolution revolution (or evo-revo, as the blogosphere will call it within the next few days) has extended to Rasputina’s music as well. With the recent addition of second-chair Sarah Bowman, Rasputina’s sixth full-length album, Oh Perilous World, has leapt from the traditional verse-chorus-verse rock formula to an intricately told fictional world involving dashing heroism, lovelorn ladies and blimp warfare. That’s right, folks: a musical.
Granted, the work hasn’t been staged, but Creager wrote the album after studying classic American musicals such as My Fair Lady and The Music Man.
“For me, the appeal in those [shows] is you don’t have to see the show to get the storyline. You just listen to the lyrics,” she says. Creager also studied how the media functions and how news is written. Many of the songs on Oh Perilous World are written like a newscast that includes media-built language and newspaper-like service announcements of the time and place of the events that occur.
This time around, Creager also mined current events in addition to the usual historical references. The result is a dizzying epic adventure. The plot involves Queen Mary Todd Lincoln, who attacks the Pacific Pitcairn Islands with her massive blimp force. Meanwhile, heading up the Pitcairn resistance is Fletcher Christian’s son, Thursday. Mary Todd and Thursday fall in love, and a fiery escape in a hot air balloon ensues.
The plot and its characters are largely allegorical: Mary Todd is President George W., the Pitcairn Islands represent Iraq, etc. Decide for yourself which parts of this storyline are true.
Creager says the transformation into modern media was a natural move.
“While reading about all of these current events, it occurred to me that a huge amount of bizarre, inexplicable things were going on,” she says. “Usually I go through books of things that grab me from the past, but here it was, all right here.”
The album sets the stage with “1816, The Year Without a Summer,” upping the unlikely-rock-instrument ante by adding a dulcimer to the mix. “Draconian Crackdown” showcases Rasputina at their fuzzed-out and plugged-way-the-hell-in best, while “Oh Bring Back the Egg Unbroken” is a sweetly told story of tradition. “Choose Me for a Champion,” one of the album’s standout tracks, rips through a propagandist speech before settling into a sweeping chorus worthy of Freddie Mercury. What’s more, the lyrics are based on — and often taken verbatim from — an actual speech by Osama bin Laden.
“I was drawn to the Arabic phrasing, to be honest,” Creager says. “It’s really poetic at times. Plus, he’s typecast as a villainous character, but I doubt many people have really read what he’s said.”
Creager says the experience of writing something as experimental as Oh Perilous World has made her a far more confident songwriter.
“Even though I’ve never had a ‘hit,’ it was still driven into me by managers and labels as always the goal: must get on the radio, have a hit, have a chorus,” she says. “Studying the musicals, I had an epiphany. I didn’t have to write that way. It was really freeing. I feel like I can write a better song now.”
Rasputina w/Jana Hunter and Castanets Thursday, July 12, 8:30pm Bluebird Theater, 3317 E. Colfax Ave., Denver Tickets: $15, ticketmaster.com
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