The Tiger Lillies @ Beck'sVerandah (12/2/2007)

Tue 13th Feb, 2007 in Gig Reviews

The word ‘avant garde’ has been thrown around lately like ‘voice of a new generation’ was at the beginning of 2006 – every band without a bass is supposedly ‘avant garde’. As the seconded performers at the the Beck’s Verandah took to the stage perhaps the term ‘avant garde’ was an understatement.

Enter, The Tiger Lillies, straight out of a Berlin cabaret circa 1925 or maybe a circus or perhaps a deep dark place that is singer Martyn Jacques’ twisted but blessed mindscape. As they took to the stage, a sense of curiosity rather then recognition swell across the wind-swept crowd and the audience began a morbid fascination with the array of personalities on stage. Taking their places behind a double bass, a keyboard accordion and a children’s drum kit encircled by an array of toys and props, they set about taking a trip into the macabre and weird, dragging their audience with them.

Jacques, with evil clown-like makeup popping out from beneath the brim of a bowler hat, singing from falsetto to a deep groan a la Tom Waits, engrossed the crowd with stories of the weird and wonderful but with such integrity that the subject matter became void. Aunty Mabel, a song about a disabled, transvestite prostitute floats across the windy peninsular of the Perth Concert Hall. Haunting, if not morose backlights created a mood of unnerving fascination in a performance set completely in the surreal. Between songs they did not break character; in fact, drummer Adrian Huge becomes more than one. From a ‘lovely schizophrenic’ old lady to a bone drum stick toting mad man during I Could Have Been a Killer.
 
Jacques’ lyrics, although of the absurd, are an array of wonderfully structure word play. Like a beatknick poet of the 1950s, he weaves wonderful stories with unassuming rhymes and perfectly delivered beats and emphasis. Banging in the Nails, a song about the justification of Jesus’ crucifixion, brings about the destruction of a drum kit at the hands of a squishy mallet-wielding Huge. As the kit lays destroyed on stage bassist Adrian Stout, now possessing the ever-popular hand saw amazes the crowd as he produces a sound of haunting beauty. And so a twenty-minute break. Returning to the stage, drum kit reassembled they take yet another turn in the macabre.

With song content ranging from ‘masturbating Jimmy’, ones ‘inability to have sex with flies’, ‘mummies in a mental home’, ‘killing and raping one’s mother’ and the always pleasurably ‘kicking babies down stairs’, it is but a twisted slide into the unknown. The Tiger Lillies could and should have lost their audience but with such wonderfully and majestically structured songs the subject matter was inherently accepted. It was as though the crowd was peering into the world of a madman, knowing full well they were safe within the world of a performance. Finishing with Crack of Doom, based everyone’s inevitable death, and the upbeat Wake Up, in which the drummer dies at the hands of his own ferocious if not mimed, then spat and then real solo. Returning to the stage to bring forth the ghosts of their fallen drummer, The Tiger Lillies ended their wonderfully absurd performance, one that had done little to quench the audience’s curiosities but more so fuel it. But, hey it’s an arts festival. It’s not supposed to be all nice and pretty. Thank God for that.