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 JODY MACGREGOR has a lovely spot of conversation with MARTYN
JACQUES, lead singer of dark cabaret/gypsy punk/circus burlesque/easy
listening band THE TIGER LILLIES.
I
don’t know what to expect from Martyn Jacques’ voice. I’ve heard it in plenty
of songs – like those from Shockheaded Peter in which he takes stories from a
German children’s book and makes them even darker than the Germans already did
– but is that androgynous falsetto going to be his speaking voice? I don’t even
know what accent to expect. Though he’s a Londoner, when he sings about
Augustus he sounds as posh as the Queen and when he sings about Filthy Phil he
sounds like a chimney-sweeping orphan.
It turns out his speaking voice is somewhere in between, working class but educated,
like one of the more polite coppers from Life On Mars. “I actually play with
accents quite a bit,” Jacques says. “Nobody’s ever picked up on that, but it’s
certainly something I do a lot. I go plummy and I go cockney. I guess I’ve
known people from both classes so I’m capable of going in both directions.”
The poster for The Tiger Lillies’ Australian tour shows
them leering at you in white facepaint with a warning their performance may
contain strong language and is recommended for over-15s. It’s funny that a band
with two albums of songs based on children’s stories – as well as Shockheaded
Peter there’s The Gorey End, written in collaboration with Edward Gorey of The
Gashlycrumb Tinies – aren’t recommended for kids, at least in Australia.
“Obviously Shockheaded Peter is really dark and disturbing, but kids like to be
frightened. Probably not frightened too much. We’ve had kids come and see
Shockheaded Peter. Some kids come and see The Tiger Lillies, their parents bring
them. I think they like it because they see this rather mischievous or
misbehaving naughty monster or whatever on the stage and it’s got a sort of
childlike feel to it. Adults behaving badly, children are quite attracted to
that.”
There is certainly a lot of behaving badly in their
music. In the past that’s made it hard for record stores to categorise their
albums, which aren’t quite Rock or World or Jazz or any of those things.
Jacques mentions that just the day before he’d found one of their CDs somewhere
even more unusual in a shop. “One of our worst, one of our most horrible albums
as well, called Lowlife Lullabies. Really dark and sinister – you know, songs
about prostitutes being murdered – really quite a dark and heavy album and it
was under Easy Listening.”
Categorising them has grown easier in recent years with
the emergence of bands who have a lot in common with them like Rasputina, Gogol
Bordello and especially The Dresden Dolls. “Their fans, they look like me. They
have bowler hats and white makeup. There you are. There’s a new generation of
‘dark cabaret’ performers now, burlesque and all this kind of stuff, so
suddenly all these people are turning up saying, ‘The Tiger Lillies are a
cabaret band, or a dark cabaret band.’ Great. After 20 years of being
completely in the wilderness, not being anything, at least now we have some
kind of label you can put on us. That’s fine with me.” The Tiger Lillies were
just ahead of their time? “About 20 years, probably.”
THE
TIGER LILLIES perform at The Powerhouse’s VISY Theatre on Tuesday Aug 4 and
Wednesday Aug 5. www.tigerlillies.com
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