Sunday Selection: Badass Cello Bands

I've decided to start a new weekly tradition at the reflecting pool; taking Sunday, the day of rest, as an opportunity to pause from from the darker elements of life and sharing a recommendation of something beautiful.

For the inaugural week, a special two-for-one celebration: two indy rock bands that prominently feature one or more kick-ass cellists.  In a world where synthesized electronic sound becomes ever more ubiquitous (not hating, I love me some Daft Punk), I am especially appreciative of bands that touch my emotional place with real, evocative instrumentation.  The Cello, being one of the largest from that stringed family instruments that includes the violin (seriously, how mind-blowing is it that a violin and a fiddle are the same thing??), offers a tremendous breadth of tone and expression and foot-stomping rhythmic qualities, and both of these ensembles put them to full, ferocious effect.

First, Murder by Death, a five-piece outfit from Indiana that also featured a keyboardist/piano player in addition to the cello stylings of Sarah Balliet.  The band has a working class, rough around the edges aesthetic, like a gang of hipster coal miners or rust belt factory workers that get together after the third shift to play their troubles away.  Sometimes, folksy, sometimes with a little blues rock edge, occasionally a dollop of country twang, MBD covers a lot of ground, but Balliet's haunting, soaring work on the cello gives the band's sound a somber continuity that grips your soul right around the pyloric sphincter.

Second, Rasputina, whose use of the cello might be even more inspired, if only because the only instruments you'll hear on a Rasputina album are two cellos and a drum kit.  The creative force behind the trio is Melora Creager, who's a bit of an indie legend in her own right - if Wikipedia can be trusted, her resume includes playing on Nirvana's final tour in 1994, working with Chris Vrenna from Nine Inch Nails on Rasputina's second album, and releasing a manifesto in the early nineties that predicted and influenced the steampunk, freak folk (?), and crafting movements.  Creager and her crew just about everything you can do to a cello, using bows, plucking with their fingers, running them through amplifiers and distorting them - you get the idea.  Rasputina has a dark sense of humor that eerily coexists with a deep emotional sincerity.  One listen to my favorite album, Frustration Plantation, will make me laugh out loud and tear up within the span of 45 minutes.  It must be those damn cellos.