The Tiger Lillies
Either Or

Release Date: 2013 | Tracklist

Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, is such a common thing they made up a word for it at some point in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. It’s become something of a cliché in popular culture, the evil clown, come to snatch the under-fives or perhaps expose themselves in front of the junior rounders team. There’s always the feeling that behind the mask lurks a sinister side, one of madness, or perversion. It’s hardly a surprise then that many musicians have seized on the chance to play up to these associations, particularly those acts who wish to offend or build up a sort of twisted mystique. For the most part you think Slipknot, you think Kiss…you think ‘hardly subtle’. The Tiger Lillies are interesting because their intentions behind slapping on the grease paint are a little more muddied. Yes, they want to shock and be lewd, but beyond that they attempt to tap into our other associations; they conjure a sort of innocent humour and an associated flipside of painfully lonely sadness too. For the Lillies there’s something elemental and timeless about the plight of poor old Coco.

‘Either Or’ boasts the Tiger Lillies album cover with the image of a clown’s face in sharpest focus, with band leader Martyn Jaques fully made up and clutching his head in horror. There are two things that are hard to work out about this picture; first, we obviously don’t know what is causing his anguish (could it be his own madness?); secondly, it’s hard to place ‘when’ this character was supposed to have lived (the font used is a bit ‘ye olde’ too). Clues are provided by the album’s title which refers to the first work released by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1843, a book that outlines a theory of human behavioural evolution from a primarily hedonistic mode to a more ethical type of existence. Putting it all together you’re left to surmise that even if our narrator is living in the modern day (and references in the lyrics to motor cars and the like would suggest they are) then this man is at the very least aware, if not downright obsessed, with a particularly depraved period of our 'not-so-distant' history.

The songs contained within certainly back up this theory. ‘Blood Alley’ opens proceedings in full glorious ‘Rain Dogs’ fashion, Jaques belching out observations of his surrounds, comparing the atmosphere to that of ‘the harbour in Shanghai in which the suicides drown’ and telling us of a woman who lost her son and has been left ‘bereft and in pain’. The fact he follows this second nugget of information with a ‘wah hay!’ goes some way to showing how our narrator is focused entirely on all the revelry, he cares not a jot. Similarly, our friendly ‘Sailor’ may see the ‘doom’ in the eyes of the junkie whore he visits but that isn’t going to stand in the way of him, to paraphrase, ‘shunting his spunk’ into a rubber. ‘Gutter’ is, if anything, even more depraved; here we find our hero wriggling in the dirt of the gutter happy as a pig in shit, taking great pleasure in reminding a local whore of how ‘the drugs and sex make you cum’ and that ‘you smile and laugh as they shove it up your arse’. Naturally the musical backing to all this fun is a sprightly accordion hurdy-gurdy knees up. ‘He’s So Bad’ meanwhile is a torch song composed for a pimp who likes to rough up his girls with a ‘pole of wood’; despite the man being described as ‘mean, dirty and lazy’ a sliver of twisted romance remains.

Everything that goes up must come down, and it’s when ‘Either Or’ chronicles this inevitable comedown that the album becomes truly fascinating. The stripped bare piano ballad ‘Boredom’ is devastating in its by turns apathetic and nihilistic worldview. The thing to listen out for here is the way in which Jaques pronounces each world so deliberately, in particular, the way he trails each ‘S’ is irresistible. His delivery is similar on the ultimate ‘tears of the clown’ anthem ‘Teardrops’, a numbingly depressive lament about the aging process and being forgotten. The musical backing is practically identical on ‘Nothing is Sin’ but here the vocals are switched to a near-spoken word with Jaques delivering his lyrics like an actor reading from a script. At first you could be forgiven for finding the performance too detached, but surely enough, the emotion creeps into his voice until finally he’s practically screaming the song's title loud enough to make your very soul squirm. The title track and 'No Sense' follow the same path but this time each maintains that detached air throughout, as if Kierkegaard himself is musing over his philosophy notes.

‘Either Or’ is a deeply strange work, one that can seem frivolous and frothy on first impression but after repeat visits soon reveals layer upon layer of intellectual and philosophical detail. This is a real ‘world builder’ of an album, you can almost taste the street air in your mouth, feel the flesh with your fingers. It’s at once a complete hoot and at the same time the most fiercely introspective work you could hope to encounter. How seriously are we supposed to take all this? When you’re holding the gaze of a clown it can be hard to tell; laugh or cry, it’s all fair game to the Tiger Lillies.

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4.1 excellent

Rank: #0 for 2013