I would like to live in Melora Creager’s head, even if just for a little while.  If her solo album, Perplexions, is any indication, it is a place filled with girls on jet packs, killer robots, various Armageddons, fantastical New World tomfoolery, Tom Petty covers, and whimsical daydreams.  And the soundtrack would be all cello, both distorted and non-distorted, with trills of vibrato-accented vocals, a bit of piano and dulcimer, some drums and some programming.  We may not be able to live there permanently, at least not yet, but luckily we have this record in the meantime.  However, while Perplexions is completely enjoyable on its own merits, I’m not sure it stacks up against Creager’s work in Rasputina.  The first three songs of this album, “Girl Lunar Explorer,” “Warbots,” and “Sky is Falling,” and the cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” are all excellent, but the other tracks fail to reach those heights.  “Border Village” is a tad lackluster, the twanging strings on “Krakatowa” are borderline annoying, and “Itinerant Airship” floats away without much depth.  Still, the great songs outnumber the imperfect ones…though Perplexions doesn’t outshine Rasputina’s Cabin Fever! or Frustration Plantation, I’d still like to live in Creager’s brainbox.

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