A RADICAL RECITAL

The first live album from Rasputina is also (to the best of my knowledge) the first on her own imprint Filthy Bonnet Company. This thing is very much a regional effort, with the live recording done in Pennsylvania and both the mixing and mastering completed in New York City, all by local talent and all within driving distance of bandleader Melora Creager's home in upstate New York.

The performances and the production quality are both quite good, especially considering this is both live and a largely self-funded effort. On some tracks like the rollicking "Howard Hughes" you can here vestiges of Electric Light Orchestra circa the days when they still had actual cello players in the band. Of course I doubt fellow cellist Zoe Keating rode on Creager's shoulders while playing the way Mike Edwards and Andy Craig used to with ELO.

The setlist includes about half of the 2004 studio release 'Frustration Plantation' which the band was undoubtedly touring to promote at the time. The rest of the tracks are a mix of tunes from the first three Rasputina records, with the distribution pretty evenly split between them.

Most of the more well-known songs Creager had written to this point are here including the depressing "Rose K."; a jaunty and partially a cappella version of Frustration Plantation's "Wicked Dickie" featuring harmonized vocals from both Creager and Keating; and the fantasy family biography "Momma was an Opium-Smoker" that calls to mind the Decemberists' "My Mother was a Chinese Trapeze Artist".

There are a few duds as far as I'm concerned, but not a lot of them. The cover of the 40s London theater chorus "If Your Kisses Can't Hold the Man You Love" didn't really connect when it appeared on 'Frustration Plantation' and it doesn't fare much better here. And "The Mayor" (also from 'Frustration Plantation') gets mired down in repetitive faux dramatic vocals and muddled percussion and just fails to take off at all despite running on for well over four minutes, an eternity for a Rasputina song.

As with most Rasputina albums there are cover tunes, in this case two of them. Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" first appeared on Rasputina's 2001 'Lost & Found' EP, while Heart's 70s classic "Barracuda" is launched for the first time as far as I know. Melora Creager has a pretty decent acid folk voice, but she isn't even in the same galaxy with the legendary goddess pipes of Heart's Ann Wilson, even on a good day. That said I like what Creager and Keating accomplish on their twin cellos, even while percussionist Jonathon TeBeest plays it a bit safe on drums. His drumming is a bit better on "Rock and Roll" but of course can't compete with the late John Bonham any more than Creager could with Wilson. And that's not the point anyway since these are offered up as loving and pretty much respectful tributes by Creager to bands and songs she no doubt grew up jamming to and valuing. Not to mention familiar songs make audiences go wild when they are faced with a concert filled with otherwise unfamiliar and strange tunes. Speaking of the Decemberists, their leader Colin Meloy surely understands that and regularly includes classic rock covers in that band's concerts, particularly as lead-ins or encores.

So nothing new here, but there rarely is on a live album. Very decent production, pretty good song selection, and mostly flawless execution by the trio of Creager, Keating and TeBeest. For those reasons three stars out of five seems fair, so that's what we'll go with. 'Melora de la Basilica' is far superior in both song and production quality, but that record was also a limited edition and kind of pricey. This one is pretty easy to find and not too expensive; you could do much worse.

peace