This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Trying to describe U.K.’s Tiger Lillies is difficult enough. But here goes: They’re sort of an old-style cabaret band, except that they write romantically sordid songs about junkies and prostitutes, which frontman Martyn Jacques sings in an ostentatious, near-operatic Dame Edna-meets-Tiny Tim falsetto.
But trying to describe this album — which finds the Lillies teaming up with avant-garde neo-classicist strings The Kronos Quartet on a set of bizarre kids songs inspired by the works of Edward Gorey — is nigh on impossible. Suffice to say that unless you have (or want) an exceedingly traumatized and troubled youngster, it would be unwise to expose their fertile minds to these lavishly off-kilter, strangely beautiful and blackly humourous tales of child prostitutes, babies torn to pieces by dogs, murderous couples, suicidal ballerinas and the ABCs of death. Once the little ones are safely out of earshot, however, pour yourself an absinthe, fire up the opium, lie back and savour the Lillies’ singing saw, the Kronos’s tasteful accompaniment and lyrical magnificently macabre couplets like, “In November it was rather frightening / When Baby Boo was struck by lightning.” Perhaps the best way to sum it up is also the most obvious: It’s Gorey indeed.
