Review Summary: Births, Marriages and Doofs
Martyn Jaques, the future 'criminal castrato' of lore, spent his childhood bored out of his mind in Slough, the one redeeming factor being that he at least received a useful musical education on the piano courtesy of theatre and cinema organist Florence de Jong. Escaping the dead end shithole that is Slough was naturally top of the man's agenda and so he enrolled on a Theology and Philosophy course as an escape route, even if he soon quit his studies and fled to the bright red lights of the squats of Finsbury Park, and later, Soho. It's here, adrift among the pimps and drug pushers, that Jaques would store up the well of inspiration he'd later combine so successfully with his burgeoning musical talent; at this stage he was already learning the accordion and perfecting his trademark falsetto, the voice that'd soon make him (relatively) famous.
Finally in 1989, aged thirty, Jaques felt he was ready to form a band and so put up an ad in Loot magazine. Once he was happy he'd found the perfect bass player and drummer for his needs he named the band The Tiger Lillies in memory of a particularly flamboyant local Soho whore and got down to the real work of gigging around Europe. It was only five years later that the Lillies would enter a studio to lay down a debut proper; unsurprisingly this record would be a morbid and down-at-heel affair. Jaques had spent many years effectively homeless; he'd been a washed up drug addict; he'd been stabbed and had countless other brushes with death. The man's lyrics were practically going to write themselves such was the wild, vivid nature of his early adulthood.
'Births, Marriages and Deaths' is a decidedly peculiar debut release, a rambling twenty five song set that hedges its bets and shows a little bit of everything the band can do. It kicks off with 'Boatman' and 'Hell' and you can't help but wonder if the album won't be a conceptual affair, a death fixated journey through the netherworld. It doesn't quite work out like that but a morbid obsession with death does linger throughout proceedings nonetheless. These two opening songs are strong, in particular 'Hell' skips along in a pleasing singalong fashion, and more high quality material duly arrives in the form of 'Heroin and Cocaine's amusing tale of overdosing school kids, 'Jacky's ode to the 'fake whore' of the song's title, and a strangely faithful reading of the traditional song 'Autumn Leaves'. Interspersed among these tracks are some rather unexceptional ditties and at the half way point of the album the listener could be forgiven for fearing they've been left hanging in their own deathless limbo, stuck in the middle like a fence sitting Fantano 'only feeling a strong 7 to a light 8'.
Thankfully, track ten marks the turning of the tide; this song implores us to 'open your legs' and it's only after this point that the real meat of the album's pussy is revealed. The exceptional Tindersticks debut was released but a year earlier and the remainder of 'Births, Marriages and Deaths' appears to take its cues from that album's masterful approach to chamber pop. The classic trio of 'Down and Out', 'Tears' and 'Her Room' even possess Tindersticks-alike song titles and it's on this material you can close your eyes for a second and picture the Lillies as an 'almost conventional' band. Indeed, if Martyn's voice could ever be classed as 'pretty' then it's on the understated verses of 'Down and Out' and the surprisingly tender 'Obscene'. Fear not, he's back to peak operatic 'Miss Piggy' form on the mesmeric 'The Flowers' before he switches it up yet again on the jazzy near-swing of 'Wake Up', putting on his most obviously feminine vocal performance. Elsewhere the band wind the clocks back to the forties and write a couple of radio tunes for our brave boys in the form of 'War' and the appropriately named (doh, Vera Lynn and all that) 'Lily Marlene'.
The markedly stronger second half sends the listener away on a high and sees Fantano boost his score up from that 7.5 to a 'decent 9'; the overall impression you're left with is that this is exactly the sort of 'warts and all' statement a cult band such as this should open their account with. The release of 'Births, Marriages and Deaths' was truly a case of the floodgates finally being prised open as from hereon out the Lillies would operate at a rate of releasing at least one album every year, each usually consisting of twenty or so songs. Thirty albums later and the well of inspiration is yet to dry, those formative years living as a down and out having not only built up a huge reservoir of inspiration to draw from but also clearly provided Martyn with a fully functioning shield of artistic integrity. As Jaques himself so eloquently puts it:
"If you’re going to write songs about such things it’s good to have spent some time living it, spent time with prostitutes and drug addicts, and I certainly have. The best part about being an artist is you don’t have to be a hypocrite. If someone accused me of sleeping with a ladyboy I could just say, ‘Well, if I did, so what?"
Amen to that brother.
Sent from my iPhone -torts
