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The Raven and the Writing Desk confound expectations

The six-piece outfit from Denver to perform at Le Voyeur

The Raven and the Writing Desk perform dark, yet soothing music worthy of their moniker. Photo courtesy of Facebook

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In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter poses this riddle: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice asks for the answer, at which point the Hatter admits that he has no clue what the answer is.

Yes, readers said to Carroll, ad nauseam, but what really is the answer? They weren't satisfied with Carroll's little joke, and after much prodding, Carroll deigned to include, as a preface to the 1896 edition of Alice in Wonderland, this attempt at an answer, with a caveat: "‘Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!' This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all."

Dissatisfied readers pressed on, however, and came up with their own solutions to the riddle. Not that it matters, but the answer that most pleases me is, "Because they both come with inky quills."

Much like the Hatter's riddle, the Raven and the Writing Desk are about confounding expectations. A six-piece outfit from Denver, the Raven and the Writing Desk's music initially conjures up connections to bands like DeVotchKa (another literary allusion) and Beirut - these purveyors of gypsy-and-otherwise-worldly musical strains. It's notable that the heart of the Raven and the Writing Desk is located in their piano, violin, and percussion. These instruments can travel anywhere, but fit quite nicely into the sort of theatrical flourish that accompanies gypsy music.

"My husband and I both moved (to Denver) from Boston, almost four years ago," says Julia LiBassi, pianist and lead vocalist. "We were playing in a seven-person rock band back in Boston, and then just made a spur-of-the-moment decision to move to Colorado. ... The music we were making was so different from the music we're making now.

"I felt like I was opened up spiritually, mentally, and artistically by being in Denver, by being by the mountains. And when Adrienne Short, our violin player, came in, and when we got the marimba, it really started to take on a different character. Now, when we play together, we try to think about the violin, the marimba, and the electric guitar as a horn section. It's not the most unusual group of instruments, but it's not the most average group of instruments. We really try to create horn section lines with those three instruments."

A more open-ended way to describe the Raven and the Writing Desk would be to simply slap the art-rock label on them and call it a day. But hearing her describe creating a faux-horn section really blows their music wide open for me. Listening again, it's easy to notice how the guitar-violin-marimba trio wash in and out of the arrangements, lending color and texture to the proceedings, while LiBassi's strident piano and staccato vocals cut through the din. The effect is of a bandleader conducting a wild orchestra.

When the Raven and the Writing Desk perform at Le Voyeur, in that tiny concrete back room, it'll be an exercise in the economical exploding of sound in cramped quarters. That wash of sound to which I earlier referred will likely condense and reverberate into something altogether cacophonous and sublime.

Incidentally, in 1928, Aldous Huxley took a crack at solving the Hatter's riddle. His answer? "Because there is a ‘B' in both and an ‘N' in neither."

I think you'll agree that the same can be said here.

THE RAVEN AND THE WRITING DESK, 10 p.m., Tuesday, July 2, Le Voyeur, 404 E. Fourth Ave., Olympia, no cover, 360.943.5710

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