Victorian Cello-Rockers Get Medieval on the Present
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, July 2007
Almost in defiance of her own eccentric persona, Rasputina front-mistress Melora Creager speaks about the inspiration for her new album in very simplistic and familiar terms— at first.
“It came from being upset about the state of the world and wanting to do something about those feelings,” she says.
Similar statements can probably be attributed to the likes of John Cougar and Sheryl Crow, but make no mistake, Rasputina ain’t in the business of selling cars.
Instead, the band’s new album, Oh Perilous World, has to go down as one of the most ambitious and gloriously bizarre political albums in recent history, with singer/songwriter/cellist Creager channeling a deluge of modern news clippings through a surreal historical prism of sorts.
“I would say it took about two years,” Creager says of her songwriting process. “I was working with an electronic notebook of stories I took out of the news—trying to use that news-style vocabulary. I also looked a lot at what some other people had done, like George Orwell with 1984. I was thinking, ‘who was this guy and how did he come to write something like that?’ Turns out, he had been a BBC radio announcer—the person that puts out the propaganda. I was also looking at musicals like The Music Man, which is my favorite one. Again, I was looking at (composer Meredith) Willson and how he came to write this brilliant thing.” She giggles a bit. “There was a lot of analyzing.”
The resulting elements of Big Brother and Broadway are certainly noticeable in Oh Perilous World’s foreboding but highly theatrical sound, but there is also a bit of simple evolution at work here.
For over a decade, Creager and her rotation of Rasputina cohorts have been the leaders and only members of the corset-wearing, electric-cello-playing, gothic-girl-group scene. Their musical style recalls Heart as often as it does Siouxsie Sioux or Joanna Newsom, and they are the only known band to have opened for both Marilyn Manson and Belle & Sebastian. Despite this healthy, iconoclastic track record, though, Rasputina seems to have liberated itself from expectations even further with its fifth album.
“’Liberated’ is a nice word,” agrees Creager. “I think that, over the years, it’s really gotten drubbed into my head to try and write a hit or to try to get on the radio. It was just pretty subconscious. Once I realized that, I thought, ‘That’s pointless and ridiculous for me! I need to get rid of that!’ So that was the liberating part—just playing songs how I felt without trying to be some other person.”
There is still a bit of role-playing at work on Oh Perilous World, however, as Creager unravels tales that are clearly based on today’s political news stories, but re-imagined inside some sort of Henry Darger-style alternate universe. George W is inexplicably recast as Mary Todd Lincoln, and the real-life words of Osama Bin Laden are accredited instead to Thursday Christian— the son of the guy (Fletcher Christian) who led the “Mutiny on the Bounty” a couple hundred years ago. One could ask why Creager has assigned her characters this way, but it sort of defeats the purpose of a good cello-rock drama now, doesn’t it?
“I think I approach it (politics) more like a writer than a musician,” Creager explains. “I would never really want to do anything literally, you know? I wouldn’t want to make a current events album. So, this was my way of telling a story. I’m going to make up a story, and I’m going to use these historical characters, and by using things that are really going on, it becomes a good combination for me—like an allegory.”
In the case of her Bin Laden research, Creager was surprised to find that many elements in his speeches could be easily translated into verse form.
“I think someone like that (Bin Laden) is villainized or made into a cartoon character for the public, and I doubt that anyone actually reads what he has to say,” she says. “When I read one of his speeches, there’s a lot of really poetic writing in there. It seems like, cast in a different light, who is the hero and who is the villain? You know, it’s hard to say. It depends on where you live.”
Creager acknowledges that part of the reasoning behind utilizing news clips and speeches on the album is to play with the listener’s perspective of the world.
“Yeah, but it’s also about stealing words from other people,” she laughs. “And I don’t think Bin Laden’s going to sue me!”
Clearly, quoting the “poetry” of a known terrorist wouldn’t be the sort of thing a major-label marketing department would suggest. But Creager has long since freed herself of such restrictions, having left Columbia Records after the release of Rasputina’s second album in 1998. Oh Perilous World was released on her own Filthy Bonnet label.
“I think it’s a weird career I’ve had, starting on a big level and gradually moving smaller and smaller over the years. But it’s been really positive for me, making the whole experience more organic and more wholesome. When you’re on a big label and have a fancy manager, you’re really out of touch with the people who are listening to your music. So I’m glad that things have gone the way they have.”
On the band’s current tour, Creager will be joined by percussionist Jonathon TeBeest and second cellist Sarah Bowman. The trio plans to continue the Rasputina tradition of Victorian theatricality—something that has both helped and hindered their career over the years.
“I think that it’s a really creative thing that people respond to, and we’ve got a playful attitude about it. You know, we like to dress up, and we’re just trying to add another visual. It’s cool when it’s fun, but I think it’s also gotten us stereotyped by people who don’t know us. A lot of people have a closed mind to us, thinking of us as goth-corset girls. That’s not what we are, really.”
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