Cold Night in Soho is the first album in ten years in which The Tiger Lillies did not put focus on theater piece. They are everything but regular band. The Tiger Lillies are also a theater group, a circus, a band, a collective of freaks, and above everything – serious musicians. When you think about dark cabaret and circus music, they come up as the first association. After so many albums, theater shows and performances, it is safe to say that the band has reached the very top of this subgenre.
The new album shows talented group in their artistic return to the basic songwriting that is mostly in the hands in Martyn Jackques. Life in Soho is the inspiration behind the Cold Night In Soho. Hanging out with outsiders, prostitutes, drunks and dillers is the key chapter of the whole story. Every song represents one story about these people, with inevitable themes of sin, religious and redemption.
Seductive harmonium of Martyn Jacques is a special ingredient and his live performance are something that everyone should experience. Instruments sound like you are listening to the live show of the record. Piano, organ and guitar accentuate the dynamic, creating orchestrations that converge into small cabaret-perfections. The sound is also intense due to the giant sadness that levitates above the music. Despair, sadness, and regret are omnipresent in the vocal interpretations. Expressive ability of singer is idiosyncratic and that is a well known fact. What still strikes me is how the emotional value of Martyn’s vocal emphasized the distinctiveness.
Heroin and Let’s Drink are the only songs with direct drug references, as drugs are a prominent preoccupation of The Tiger Lillies. The rest of the songs are more autobiographical, created in autobiographical tone. Salvation Army, Pierrot Clown and Funeral Song speak about the lives of people from Soho without censorship, completely raw and straightforward.
Ticking of the Hours shines in the middle of the album and it falls somewhere in between biography themes and general ones. Harmonium serves as the lamentation over the past lives, but also as a fear of uncertain future.
The title track underlies the whole narrative and represents the final act of confrontation with the demons of the past.
One thing is for sure – The Tiger Lillies are not for everyday listening. They are appropriate for every night. So much expression is not easy to be found, and when you dress it up in eccentric cabaret sonic landscape, it is impossible not to indulge time after time.
