Friday, June 11, 2010

Envy; The Tiger Lillies

A few weeks ago, visiting the überblog Boing Boing, I found an article about the Tiger Lillies’ creepy cabaret punk. Cabaret music style is a piece of gold, very cool and charming, but cabaret punk? I needed to hear it. At first sight, the look of the three members of the band made up my mind. Okay, the video clip loaded on Boing Boing was entrancing! Really! From this moment, Tiger Lillies became one of my favorite bands ever!

In my opinion, Tiger Lillies’ best album is “Freakshow”, but I couldn’t hear them all. “Freakshow”, “Shockheaded Peter”, “The Gorey End” (with Kronos Quartet) and “Seven Deadly Sins” are the ones I listened to. The most interesting thing is that they write theatrical pieces not songs for an album.

This week I started to listen to “Seven Deadly Sins”, 2008, wandering if they whistle in any song. Really! The sung sin “Envy” is the whistling song. “Envy” explicits another good peculiarity of Tiger Lillies: the guys use a minimal thing (like this wistlings or like a musical saw or even one word in the lyrics) as the trump card of their songs.

“Envy” is cruel and ludic at the same time. So ludic that I want to sing it to my child, if I have one! ^^

Don’t forget to envy every man
His suffering and his torment is a lifetime planned
So don’t forget to envy something that don’t exist
A phantom of your fantasy that writhes and licks and twists

Look he’s got a big car you’d like to fuck his wife
You’d like to have his money, you’d like to have his life
So you burn with envy soon you’ll burn in hell
Soon you’ll burn… oh well

You be nasty to him, you be so unkind
Every kindness you become blind
So you burn with envy soon you’ll burn in hell
Soon you’ll burn, soon you’ll burn… oh well

If only you had this or that then it would be fine
You’d like to take it from him he’s just a filthy swine
Stab the bastard in the back it’s just what he deserves
He’s just a little toerag he’s just a little turd




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