Brothel To Thecemetery

The Tiger Lillies | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 22, 1998)
• Original Release Date: July 23, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: RUFF STUFF RECO
• ASIN: B000009ONT
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,754 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Russians

2. Tiger Lillie Line

3. Roll Up

4. Sailors

5. Gypsy Lament

6. Decline

7. Alone With The Moon

8. Arthur

9. Terrible

10. Crime

11. Pretty Soon

12. Old Gracefully

13. Mortuary

14. Reap What You Sow

15. Banging In The Nails

16. Nightingale

17. Heaven To Hell

18. Slough

19. Millionaire

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quickly becoming my favorite band, June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Brothel To Thecemetery (Audio CD)

There's no defining The Tiger Lillies. What initially attracted me to them was a sticker on the CD with a reviewer's quote that said "Tom Waits on helium." Being a big Waits fan, I gave it a spin. I might say it's more like Brecht channeled through Tom Waits.

The Tiger Lillies have a distinctively European sound to them, but it's often a burlesque noise that stands in contrast to the bizarre lyrics about freaks, geeks, whores, and the hopeless. In the Lillies' world, the madness of man is a carnival, as they say in Roll Up, "Our life is a sideshow attraction: death, decay and disease."

One is reminded, listening to this CD, of Nero, mad and fiddling while Rome burned. However, there is an undercurrent of tragedy in the ballads that, just when you're ready to accept the view in the funhouse mirror you've been looking at, cuts through to the bone and reminds you that all this pain and filth is for real.

Make no mistake, while some of these songs are a lot of fun, this is not a fun or pretty album. However, if you have a tender spot in your heart for nihilistic iconoclasm presented with a drunken irony, then this may just be the band for which you've been looking.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Nihilistically Inclined", August 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Brothel To Thecemetery (Audio CD)

There are few ways to decribe this band and their music. The best way that I can think of is Tom Waits on helium and the Squirel Nut Zippers having a bad LSD trip and singing while the whole of Europe is crumbling in the background. The mood is one of surreal gloom, puncuated by an occassional bouncy accordian which mocks the destruction in the background. If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, stick this CD in for Music for the End of the Your World. It will make you feel better about it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HAPPILY, AS OURAGEOUS AS EVER, November 23, 2005

By 

Klingsor Tristan (Suffolk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brothel To Thecemetery (Audio CD)

Martyn Jaques - the man with the voice of a foul-mouthed fallen angel - chanteuses his way through another collection of deeply subversive songs. The world-view is almost unremittingly pessimistic, but the wit is as sharp as ever, the melodies as haunting and the syle as inimitable. Here be ballads that will break your heart, singalongs that will shock you when you realise what the words you're singing are saying and the ever pulsing, swelling, keening sounds of Jacques' accordion. If you've never heard the Tiger Lillies before, you're in for a unique experience, unlike anything you've heard before both in style and content. But be warned. If you are of a nervous disposition, there is material here to get up your nose big-time. If not, enjoy. Even if songs like 'Banging in the Nails' don't have quite the (literal) impact they have in their live show, this disc still packs a punch