Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We Never Even Had A Nightmare Or A Beautiful Dream About This..., July 16, 2007
Oh Perilous World, Rasputina's fifth original CD release, brilliantly blends current world events with their classic historical style, all fused together with cellos, drums, and haunting vocals.
This album, like most of their previous efforts, is a concept album, following this storyline: Mary Todd Lincoln is Queen of Florida, and her blimp armies have attacked Pitcairn Island, where Fletcher Christian's son Thursday ("played" by drummer Jonathan TeBeest) emerges as a resistance icon.
Melora Creager (the brains behind Rasputina) "wrote the songs featured on Oh Perilous World over the last two years after deciding current world events were more bizarre than anything she could scrounge up from the distant past." And indeed, subjects range from the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden. Hurricane Katrina, Avian Flu, and the like. Because the subjects are blended in with the concept theme, I don't feel they are presented in an in-your-face way.
"The songs were recorded primarily with cello and drums, but despite this simple palette Rasputina create a wide range of textures and effects, including what seems to be electric guitars and violins -- but is actually cunningly played and recorded cello."
My favorite songs are "1816, The Year Without a Summer"; "Draconian Crackdown"; "We Stay Behind"; and "The Infidel is Me."
IF YOU ARE A DEVOUT FAN, I recommend you buy the CD from their website, as you may still be able to get a copy of the limited edition, which has a bonus disc featuring three additional songs and six of their infamous skits. The bonus disc tracks are as follows:
1. The Question Of Time
2. Identity Tokens
3. The Humanized Mice
4. The Pruning (Pat O'Brian / Access Hollywood Mix)
5. Flood Corps
6. Incapable Of Regret
7. Desert Vampire
8. The Contractors
9. Infidel (Instrumental Demo)
I think the skit "The Pruning (Pat O'Brian / Access Hollywood Mix)" alone is worth the extra money, as it's a hilarious recording of (someone who sounds a lot like) Pat O'Brian speaking the lyrics of the song over the music. It's truly funny!
All in all, these girls are my favourite band in the world, and Melora's addition of Sarah Bowman on second chair only reinforces that fact.
(All quotes are from Rasputina's website.)
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4.0 out of 5 stars
You're showing every sign of losing your heart, January 9, 2009
Gothic alt-rock played with cellos -- it sounds pretty horribly precious, doesn't it?
And it would be, if Rasputina weren't such great musicians, who could mingle tragic history stories with quirky chamberpop and classical instrumentation. And their latest album "Oh Perilous World" comfortably straddles the fence between rock and cabaret, and seems to be having fun while it does so.
It opens with a creepy, ominous cello melody, and Melora Creager's girlish voice telling us solemnly, "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." It's a rambling, weird song about Freemasons, Ben Franklin, Frankenstein, volcanoes and other such subjects.
Things get even stranger with the quirky chamber-rocker that follows ("choose me to be your champion/I am possessing of a very righteous style!"), not to mention the string of melodies that follow: clashing cellopop, gothic balladry, a rapid-fire rocker, a tinkly pop song, rambling interludes, and the sweeping beauty of "Old Yellowcake" and the sly "A Retinue Of Moons/The Infidel Is Me."
Rasputina is one of those genrebusting bands -- they manage to keep themselves rooted in rock, pop, chamber music, and still sound like they live in a big old ruined Victorian house with some friendly ghosts and a lot of newspapers. They're a little bit of everything, and have kept their quirk.
Obviously the main instrument here is cello. Lots of cello. And Creager knows how to mold it to her purpose, whether it's a melodious sweep, an awkward twang, or urgent dark chords like an electric guitar. But to keep it from getting monotonous, there's some fuzzy guitar in "Draconian Crackdown" that takes over the song, as well as a gentle piano in the ballads, and a jingle of bells here and there.
Creager has a pretty, girlish voice, but she sings some pretty weird, sometimes gruesome songs about broken butterflies, blood-spattered lace curtains and the descendants of mutineers. Some are taken from actual history. And how can you ignore lyrics so quirky as to tell you that a reaper is inthe flowerbed? Or that "I have charisma and of course a winning smile/I stand accused of being an audacious redeemer/Not a charge I can deny."
Full of history and dark humor, "Oh Perilous World" is a pretty solid chamber-rock album that has its moments of excellence. Definitely worth hearing, if nothing else for its cello playing.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
evolutionary work, October 21, 2008
This album, more so than any other, expounds on the Rasputina mythology of 17th/8th century imagery interspersed with modern anachronisms. The sound diverges from the darker, "gothy" sound of earlier albums. Lots more dulcimer and upbeat melodies. Songs like "retinue of moons" really demonstrate Melora's talent.
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