In the highbrow stakes try this one on for size. 'Oh Perilous World' is an album made by a "chamber pop duo" comprising primarily cello, drums and vocals and described on the sleeve as "selected excerpts from The Finest Show that NEVER was!" OK, so they're a duo (well, with some help from additional cellist Sarah Bowman), but even from this brief synopsis you'll probably glean that The White Stripes they ain't.
However, for all the potential art conceits, RASPUTINA do come with some high-ranking rock'n'roll cred intact, for they're predominantly the brainchild of one Melora Creager, who you might remember from the small print as the cellist who graced Nirvana's tremendous 'In Utero' album. It's not the only feather in her CV'S cap, either, for she's also a veteran of several Ultra Vivid Scene albums and - having teamed up with splendidly-named drummer Jonathan TeBeest - she's been touting Rasputina around for the best part of fifteen years now.
So - in theory - what's good enough for the two Kurts (Messrs. Cobain and Ralske, respectively) should certainly be good enough for this writer, but, in all honesty, 'Oh Perilous World' (actually Rasputina's sixth album, though I have bugger all knowledge of the previous five) is hard going and, in some places, too overtly cerebral for its' own good.
There again, I guess you're hardly liable to hear the UK Subs back catalogue when confronted by an album made up of songs designed to address bizarre and often harrowing current events, taking in everything from global warming through to the destruction of Fallujah and an address given by Osama Bin-Laden. So in terms of ambition, at least, '...Perilous World' is a resounding success.
And it certainly has its' moments too. Bearing in mind the world's ongoing climate meltdown, opener '1816, The Year Without A Summer' seems pretty bloody timely. Lyrically, it's fascinating ("June 1816 - a sudden snowstorm blankets all the countryside, so Mary Shelley had to stay inside and she wrote 'Frankenstein'") and musically it's a gas too: all ominous drums, dulcimers getting a good Keefchording and the cello howling fit to burst. It's a good advertisement for banishing guitars altogether, as are tracks like the fundamentalist blues of 'Choose Me For A Champion' (the Bin-Laden one) and the densely attractive 'Incident In A Medical Clinic', both of which remind me of the jumpstart my pulse felt the first time I heard Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet's 'The Juliet Letters'.
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Sadly, though, over the course of 50 minutes or so, the attraction has a tendency to pall. Even if the idea of a band coming on (at their best) like a mutant cross between Led Zeppelin and The Creatures sounds ace on paper, tracks like the lugubriously sludgy 'Draconian Crackdown' or the concerto for voice and recorder that is 'Child Soldier Revolution' are more than enough to send theory packing. If that wasn't enough, after a while Creager's overheated vocals - imagine a hybrid of Siouxsie, Bjork and a Victorian fishwife and you're homing in - grate pretty seriously and the 'concept' (erk!) behind the songs becomes impossible to follow. For example, 'Cage In A Cave' is allegedly about Fletcher Christian's son Thursday (huh?) while apparently the album's overall 'theme' concerns Mary Todd Lincoln as Queen Of Florida and her blimp armies attacking Pitcairn Island. Er...excuse me? Suddenly, the 'plot' behind David Bowie's curious 'Outside' album seems considerably less opaque.
Admittedly, things do pick up again latterly, with the unwieldy, but undeniably moving Fallujah commentary 'In Old Yellowcake' and the sparse 'We Stay Behind' concerning the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the plight of New Orleans, but by this time it's all sounding rather too little too late.
Although I'd love to give Rasputina the casting vote simply for daring to be different, much of this album reminds me of that old adage about Russia being a mystery inside a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. 'Oh Perilous World' is similarly mystifying and although you can't knock Rasputina in terms of ambition or imagination, where personal response is concerned, admiration comes much quicker than love.
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