Rasputina offers vagrant travelers a place to rest for the small price of listening to her countless fables. The bonfire’s smoke recoils from her yellowed nails as she recounts her hundredth mountain tale. However, with her sweet fluttering voice, she hypnotizes her tired guests and they remain in their mossy chairs. A moist, maggot-infested cello accompanies Rasputina’s seemingly innocuous croons, but her omniscient, milky eyes, flicker as if to say the songs will determine their journey’s end.
In “Calico Indians,” weaving cello lines croak as raw, wavering vocals snake through a gypsy’s plot. Percussion chirps like a chorus of unseen insects. And as the tale intensifies, strings tumble and suspend brittle leaves in their gusty trace.
Rasputina stomps circles around the travelers in her telling of “Rats,” a darker tale about the 16th century decision to eat capybara as fish for Lent. In story-telling fervor, her cello slips from her arms and angrily grumbles back. Tough vocals wail symbolic warnings but often recede to falsetto chants as Rasputina foresees her spectators’ futures.
Claiming to have formed in 1891, Rasputina possesses all the wisdom of a 119 year-old being. Listen to her eerie fortune-telling at the Armory Cafe, Thursday, July 8th, 6 pm.