*** Rasputina

HOW WE QUIT THE FOREST

(Columbia)

Rasputina, a trio of New York women who play cello, picked up a lot from touring with Marilyn Manson -- not least a new drummer, former Nine Inch Nails associate Chris Vrenna. His singleminded snare crack is the first sound on this disc, and his electronic effects augment its weirdness all the way through. Although the group play up their gothic frilliness, they have a goofy side -- the third line of the record is "Space Ghost coast-to-coast" -- as well as a surprising capacity for ferocity (it's amazing how harsh a distorted cello can sound).

At times, Rasputina's frivolous mock-dignity becomes too much of a joke, as on the quasi-classical cover of Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me." The best tracks here are the ones that play up the freshness and strangeness of the sound, as the band work the cellos for their standard sonorities one moment and pull up their eeriest free-floating wails and alien plucks the next. And though singer Melora Creager likes to distort her voice, her soft, possessed vibrato can be equal parts creepy and sexy -- a finely unsettling counterpart to the group's funereal hum.

-- Douglas Wolk