Rasputina at the Regent theater

[music | Skinny Puppy - Two Time Grime]

You know Goldielocks? Yeah, this show was like that.

The first time we saw Rasputina was in a small dingy club 3 hours away and got to sit on the nice sticky (HEP-ey, more like) floor due to the mechanics of a standing crowd looking roughly downward at a seated band. It was fun, we had a great time, but couldn't walk afterwards, and there were some folks there for whom sitting in their corsets shouldn't have been a realistic option, all cinched up like that.

Second time was a catastrophe with glow sticks and batteries flying which still makes me mad, less said the better.

The Regent is a theater, with seats, and a stage. That seems to be "just right". It was a small crowd and we could sit wherever, no one had to duck beer cans and the sound was very good.

The Bowmans opened, which is the heir apparent 2nd cellist and her sister. It was a good set and Sarah has a strong voice. Too strong to sing backup for Melora Creager? We'll see. We bought their CD, the Porker Song (written age 8) was about as close as you'd get to the level of Silly I've come to expect from a Rasputina show. They were fun though.

The Rasputina set was good, good mix of old and new, though a lot of the new is what we've been seeing for a year. I guess it's only 2 more months until the new CD comes out. We were treated to the vocal stylings of Jonathan TeBeest, which was great, lookin' all Don Henley back there and stuff. The new songs were good, the new stuff seems to be a lot less effects-driven than I would have expected, which isn't bad, just different. The lyrics are pretty much funny history and pseudo-science type stuff. Like'd 'em, now just get a CD in our hand.

Sarah Bowman seemed to fit pretty well, she has less of a steam/rivet-punk vibe than Zoe Keating, both in appearance and in the type of music she makes outside Rasputina, but she played and sang well. When you could hear her voice at all. She kind of blended in both with Melora because their voices are both pretty high, and with her instrument at times. Or maybe she was just turned way down, it was hard to tell.

I think When I Was a Young Girl and Wicked Dickie are pretty much off the table unless they make Jonathan sing them, and he'd still have too high a voice for it.

For the encore, Melora came out and did a song solo which reminded us both of The Black Angel's Death Song by Velvet Underground, and of Legions series by Zoe Keating. It was good, pretty bare, would have been cool if she'd ripped that idea and looped the couple bars and had it running through the whole thing too.

I still have no idea who was playing 2nd chair for the Primus show we were at, but it would seem that those were about the only major shows she played with the band, and what an introduction: Go out here, dodge batteries, and don't screw up. Then gone 4 shows later, that has to suck. I still remember the look on her face after their set out in the lobby, just horrified, hah.

Here are a couple pictures from the Worst Camera Phone Ever, wouldn't be complete without them.