Sunday at the Troubadour: Rasputina Tangles Cellos, Tales of Mary Todd Lincoln, "Barracuda"
Melora Creager created a bewitchingly strange alternate universe on Rasputina's 2007 album, Oh Perilous World, blending real-life events and references to Osama bin Laden and the battle for Fallujah with a fantastic cast of literary and historical figures including Fletcher Christian and poor, demented Mary Todd Lincoln. Creager's goal wasn't escapism so much as it was to examine the real world anew with a fairy-tale sense of wonder.
For all of her highflying whimsy, songs like "Cage in a Cave" were undeniably catchy and poppy, contrasting the hard and sinister lurch of "Draconian Crackdown" and the foreboding tangle of cellos of "In Old Yellowcake." She's woven her unique cello sound into collaborations with Nirvana, Belle & Sebastian and the Pixies, and on this tour she's paired with Rasputina's first male co-cellist, Daniel DeJesus, and a new drummer, Catie D'Amica.
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