Mon. Oct. 31

 I saw the Tiger Lillies but once, somewhere in the mid-90s, at the late, lamented Kendall Café (a very intimate setting) and remember being quite wowed by these charismatic, oddball British gypsy cabaret punks, whose sartorial style (and violent theatrical lyrics) owed just a bit to Malcolm McDowell’s in “A Clockwork Orange.” (No knock on Amanda Palmer or Dresden Dolls, but the Lillies were there first.) In fact, singer-accordionist-uke player Martyn Jacques and his two merry men have been doing this since 1989. This, in the words of England’s Evening Standard is a “a journey into wild emotion that passes right through melodrama and out the other side into bizarre beauty.” Sounds right. They’ve got a Halloween show, Monday Oct. 31 at 10:30 at Club Oberon and we spoke recently with Jacques from New York. Jacques will be joined in Cambridge by longtime fellow Lillies, Adrian Stout and Adrian Huge

JSInk: What themes concern you now?
Jacques: We’ve just been doing a theatre show in Vienna for the last six weeks, “Woyzeck,” an old German play from the 1820s. Tom Waits did a version of it. Robert Wilson did a version. It’s been done by lots of people. We’re not doing the show here – it involves a 12- piece brass section and actors -  but some of the songs will be “Woyzeck” songs and it is about this guy who murders his girlfriend ;cause she has an affair with another man. The theme is murder, jealously and madness. And then the others main source [for the Cambridge concert] comes from an old album around the time you saw us, a little later maybe, “Low Life Lullabyes,” [1998] which as the name would suggest, is about people that are drug addicts or prostitutes or poor people. The third thing I usually do at the end is a few old songs, requests. We’ve recorded something like 30 albums, so it’s different songs from different albums people shout out songs. Sometimes, I can’t remember the lyrics.  My memory is limited so. But sometimes when they should it out, I relearn the song.

When this first got going, did you ever think it Tiger Lillies would have such longevity?
I remember when we first performed in a smal folk cellar, about 70 people there, and I remember being nervous to begin but walking off thinking I’ve found something I’m able to make a living from. I sensed that from the audience. It was a great response. This really works and they really liked.

Did you think you were creating a genre unto itself?
I don’t think you create genres. It would be conceited and arrogant. You listen to various people, somebody like Tom Waits. Obviously, I hate to be compared to Tom Waits, [being called a] copyist or impersonator but his style of music that he’s been making, it’s not so far away. It is amazing how much more popular and fashionable this music has become. We seem to have come into fashion, although we’re still quite underground. But this whole cabaret thing seems to have become a sub-genre that is recognized now. You get a lot of younger people who like Tiger Lillies. You [in Boston] had the Dresden Dollls, that to me was really amazing. I thought they were a copyist band, but more stylistically. The music is a bit different, but the bowler hates and the stripey tights, I was amazed how close that was to “Shockheaded Peter” [a ‘’junk opera” Tiger Lillies did in 1998]. But it was fantastic. And they popularized [that kind of music]. We played with them once in Boston.  Amanda covered one of our songs. We inspired them a bit and it's cool. If somebody takes what you've done and makes it more popular, you should pleased rather than annoyed.

There’s a balance of elements in your music – dark and whimsical, but there is certainly, to borrow a phrase from a song by Magazne, a rhythm of cruelty in it, too.

It’s pretty clear if you go for a walk around big cities and see people, there’s a lot of cruelty and things that are not very nice. People destroying themselves with drugs, alcohol, food. There’s self-destruction running through many of us. Some of us manage to control it. And then there’s the cruelty of one person exploiting other people, a factory with people working there being exploited by the boss. Lots of elements of real cruelty. I sing about it. It’s not just me, a lot of artists have done that, like Charles Dickens. Man is capable of incredible cruelty and self destructiveness. In a way I’m singing about things that actually are. I get fed up when some journalists say I’m into shock and I’m not really – I do shock sometimes and I quite enjoy it, but at the same time that’s a very simplistic way of looking at what we do. I try to actually sing about the way things are.

Yet, there is humor.
Through all this cruelty, it seems strangely uplifiting. I try to have black humor and irony. The human condition is quite funny and absurd. To laugh it makes a lot of sense. I don’t want people to walk away from a Tiger Lillies show thinking “Isn’t life terrible?” and walk away feeling miserable.

Has that changed since you began?
I don’t think I’ve changed much from when you saw me. But back in ‘89 –’91, the humor didn’t’ come. It was very melancholy and sad. That first audience of 70 I was telling you about, most of them were crying. It was incredibly melancholy. Later,I started to break it up a bit with humor, something crude or vulgur or ironic. A surprise and variety.

Sample video: “Bully Boys” http://youtu.be/zhrGspR0yQo
Tickets: $25

2 Arrow Street at the corner of Mass Ave. in Harvard Square. 866-811-4111 www.cluboberon.com