Prostitutes and STDs: a concert one may want to walk out of
The Lollipop People and the Tiger Lillies at Innis Town Hall, November 10th, 2005
By Jessica Mifsud
Issue date: 11/17/05 Section: Film & Music
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The big fuss of this evening was the imminent performance by the Tiger Lilles, who apparently are making quite a stir in their native Britain, and had finally come across the pond for a one-night-only show. The crowd inside Innis Town Hall looked excited when I got there. As excited as a fairly small crowd could, anyway. But I wasn't worried. After all, the opening act hadn't even hit the stage yet.
Okay, that was a lie. I was worried. The entire reason I was at the show was to see the opening act, a local "experimental cabaret" group known as the Lollipop People, and the small crowd was disheartening. But the room was filling slowly, so by the time the ten assorted Lollipop People took their places on stage I felt better able to enjoy the show.
The set began with Friendly Rich, Lollipop frontman, playing a creepy, tinkling carnival tune on a wind-up music box. From here, the People launched into what Rich called a "suite", because the entire set was only 20 minutes long and the audience was expressly forbidden from clapping between songs. The People ran their set with enthusiasm and professionalism, playing tracks from their album "We Need a New F-Word" while some of the strangest claymation this reviewer has ever seen played in the background. All the songs were catchy and entertaining to listen to, even if none of what the Lollipop people played would have sounded out of place in the Moulin Rouge movie.
The highlight of this set was the "10 round" song about Torontonian boxer George Chuvalo. As well as being an interesting musical number, the song also featured the dance stylings of the one and only Naked Marvin, although he was, thankfully, only "98% naked". The set concluded with the band members picking up their instruments while continuing to play (except for the harpist), and walking out of the room a la Arcade Fire. A thoroughly captivating 20 minutes from a band I'd definitely seek out again.
The Tiger Lillies, however, I'm still not able to find much praise for. They are probably best described as "quirkily amusing", for the first five songs, anyway, after which point they slide into "vaguely unsettling" and "repetitious", and finally hit "just nod and smile, it'll be over soon". When the three Tiger Lillies came onstage, I was expecting to see evidence of a typical British sense of humour, and the bowler hats, rubber chicken stuck in the drum kit, and clownish painted face of the singer did not disappoint. Nor did the "nagging-Monty-Python-British-woman" falsetto the singer adopted through practically the entire show.
