Thanks for the Ether

Review by Darren Kerr

No, ladies, thank you. If you keep displaying such wondrous tunesmithing, I'll get you all the ether you want. Hell, I'll score you morphine, adrenochrome, good B.C. pot, peyote buttons, anything... you just say the word and roll the tape.

Rasputina are a New York quartet (three cellists and a drummer) who wear Victorian corsets and write beautiful ominous melodies that, in a more puritanical era, would be more than enough to have them burned as witches. This is music that floats like a ghost and bleeds dark humour from many pretty wounds.

Melanie's "Brand New Key" and the 1942 chestnut "Why Don't You Do Right?" sit nicely alongside twisted originals "Transylvanian Concubine," "My Little Shirtwaist Fire" and "Rusty the Skatemaker." It doesn't surprise me that Marilyn Manson has remixed choice cuts from this album for an EP titled Transylvanian Regurgitations.

I'm warning you, though: don't dismiss Rasputina as easily as Manson, or I'll make sure you have more than your finger pricked!