Rasputina

by Jason Ankeny
The New York City-based trio Rasputina was led by singer/songwriter Melora Creager, a classically-trained cellist who backed Nirvana on the group's final tour. In 1992, Creager placed a want ad seeking other cellists to form a rock band; among those responding was Canadian musician Julie Kent, and with the later addition of Polish native Agnieszka Rybska, Rasputina was born. The three cellists' image further developed by the addition of tightly-laced vintage Victorian costumes, their gothic chamber-pop soon caught the attention of Sony, who issued the group's debut Thanks for the Ether in 1996; Transylvanian Regurgitations, an EP featuring remixes by fan Marilyn Manson, appeared a year later, and in 1998 Rasputina resurfaced with How We Quit the Forest. By the new millennium, Rybska and Kent had been replaced with Nana Bornant and K. Cowperthwaite. A deal with Instinct surfaced in 2001 and the magical mystery of Cabin Fever appeared the following spring. Bornant's stay was brief; she left in June 2002 and Cowperthwaite followed four months later. Zoe Keating (cello) and first ever male bandmate Jonathon TeBeest were quickly added to the beautiful chaos of Rasputina just in time for the 2003 release of the Lost & Found EP. Frustration Plantation, their most cohesive work to date, appeared in spring 2004. In 2007 the group released Oh Perilous World, a loosely-connected song suite culled from newspaper clippings that lead singer Melora Creager gathered over a two year period, then juxtaposed with the band's signature 18th century steampunk imagery.