Personal provocateurs                       på svenska

Zoophilia and Balkan music. When the Tiger Lillies enter the stage they leave nobody untouched. It’s all about agitation in the name of love.

“I’m terrible, I’m terrible, I shouldn’t be allowed to sing my songs of filth to a decent crowd, but when I do offend someone it makes me feel so proud.”

The chorus of the British group the Tiger Lillies song “Terrible” could be autobiographical. Their record Farmyard Filth deals with sex with animals and the record before was named Brothel to the Cemetery. The Tiger Lillies are testing all kinds of limits. But – they also create something very personal. This autumn (2000) they visited Sweden with the musical theatre Shockheaded Peter. Many were enchanted by their special style, with their songs about odd people and strange destinies, as well as by the music that sounded both familiar and very characteristic.

Tiger Lillies have toured a lot these last years, and so far released eleven albums. They have sold over 20 000 records, most of them at concerts and through their home page.
– “When I started the Tiger Lillies I had the naive belief that if you make music which is hard to place within easily defined categories and has a unique sound, then success will follow”, says the songwriter and accordion player of the group Martyn Jacques, who started the band in 1989. – “I of course now realize just how stupid I was. The whole music business is about dressing up and marketing clichés”. Martyn Jacques has no illusions left, neither in his songs nor in reality. If he ever had any …

The trio was founded in an apartment on top of a Soho strip bar. The group name has nothing to do with the lovely flower – they are named after a murdered hooker, Lily, who had the habit of receiving her customers dressed in animal prints. Phil Butcher played bass and Adrian Huge percussion (including kitchenware, toys etc.). 1995 Adrian Stout replaced Butcher on the double bass. After some hard years with desperate playing in pubs with an audience more interested in beer and football, some people began to apprehend the unique qualities of the band, which then gradually became a cult group in London’s more odd circles.

Jaques’ very special singing style, a high falsetto, has been labelled both castrato soprano and “Tom Waits on helium”. On some records you can feel the influence of another soprano, the American hippie-hero and ukulele outsider Tiny Tim (if anyone remembers him). Sometimes Jacques screams his words. When he for a change sings “normally” it could be John Lennon. But – it’s not often normal.

1997 the group had planned a concert at the Union Chapel, Islington. On Good Friday. In a press release they announced that “the perverse troubadours, the Tiger Lillies, will perform extreme tales of romance, insanity, blasphemy and surreal sexual practices at this event, performed in a demented decadent accordion-led style that mixes pre war Berlin cabaret from Hell, strange gypsy music, black comedy, French chanson, and English music hall. You will on Friday be able to hear songs such as ‘Banging in the Nails’… So grab your crown of thorns, polish your nails. Reduced entrance for those dressed as Jesus or Mary Magdalene.”

The gig was cancelled. The chorus of Banging the Nails goes: ”I’m crucifying Jesus, I’m banging in the nails, and I am so happy because ol’Jesus failed…”

Blasphemy is only one of the provocations that await you if you listen to the Tiger Lillies. Farmyard Filth deals with zoophilia. In the song “Vagina” Jacques is lamenting the fact that his baby giraffe lover has grown to high for him. On the cover the group stand in different poses with their pants down by their ankles and an inflatable plastic sheep …

The lyrics are strange and insulting. The music is less provocative – but none the less very special. It has strong traces of cabaret, with influences from John Kanders Cabaret, Berthold Brecht, Edith Piaf, Kurt Weill and Tom Waits’ Black Rider – all in a glorious mix. Sometimes its Balkan and gypsy tones, other times more of an opera.

On most records they have help from additional musicians on piano, cello, violin, banjo, clarinet and trombone, even guitar – though Martyn Jacques has declared that he hates that instrument as much as he hates rock music. Their latest album “Circus Songs”, produced by Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees, is more straightforward, with the three main instruments in focus. This lifts among other things Adrian Stout’s skill as a bass player (it is said that he once turned down an offer to play in Bob Dylan’s backup band…).

On the record there is among other songs a cover of Danced all Night. This song would have filled the dance floor on any Swedish Folkets Park (amusement park) – provided that people hadn’t realized it’s a man who sings! The lyrics on Circus songs deal with the people around the circus: dwarves in the freak show, the bearded lady, the knife throwers, the clowns, Lisa who is beaten by her lover …

How do you reach a live audience with this weird material? The Lillies have more and more begun to use the theatre as a stage. At their appearances in Gothenburg and Stockholm they brought their version of the German stories of Shockheaded Peter – you know the moralizing tales from the 19^th century about Conrad who sucks his thumb, Augustus who won’t eat his soup and Harriet who plays with matches.

Martyn Jacques has adapted these tales in his own way – meaning among other things that all the tales now end up with death. “It felt more consequent that way”! On stage they also have actors, toys and up to supernatural sized puppets. Behind the Tiger Lillies nasty provocations there is a musical tenderness and undercurrent of brutal beauty. The lyrics deal with weird people – but they are never treated as objects, always as persons. The odd humour and Jacques’ vibrant soprano leaves no one indifferent. The group obviously loves their freaks.

That is Tiger Lillies. Hear them!

Ulf Torstensson (Lira 2001 (English translation by the author))

To a list of the group’s recordings (from their website, with their own comments).

To my list of reviews (in Swedish).