The Tiger Lillies: Suicide for Christmas

The Tiger Lillies are nothing short of an international cult phenomenon, with a decade-long career throughout which they have fused the spirit of punk with the passion of Left Bank Paris and the savagery of Dickensian underculture. Following sold-out annual Halloween shows over the last few years at St. Ann’s Warehouse, the group returns due to popular demand, this time premiering a characteristically wicked set of holiday songs, Suicide for Christmas. The shows will include material from their two new albums, Urine Palace and Love and War.

The Tiger Lillies are Martyn Jacques (vocals, accordion), Adrian Stout (bass) and Adrian Huge (percussion). Jacques, who has elicited such colorful appellations as “the criminal castrati [sic]” and “Tom Waits on helium,” sings savage, heartbreaking songs about prostitutes, drug addicts, losers and other unsavory characters. His corrosive lyrics are deepened by the angelic voice he employs to deliver them and the startling music against which he sings them. What unifies The Tiger Lillies’ music — a mixture of opera, gypsy song, scum bucket jazz and Victorian music hall — is raw emotional energy.

Among the group’s recent albums is Die Weberischen, which Variety called “a gloriously nasty piece of work that sardonically explores Mozart’s fascination with the daughters of Cilly Weber.” The lyrics epitomize the Lillies: “Six sons dead, four sluts to feed, sell those bitches for my needs — life’s a bitch.” Other albums include The Mountains of Madness (2005), a collaboration with Einstürzende Neubauten’s Alexander Hacke, based on the nightmarish writings and life of American writer H.P. Lovecraft; Punch and Judy (2004); Death and the Bible (2004); The Gorey End (2003), on which the Lillies were joined by the Kronos Quartet; Circus Songs (2000); and Shockheaded Peter (1998).