TULLE is the musical equivalent of every horror show they broadcast on TV on Halloween (“the best day of the year” as she describes it) – the movie franchise of that title, and those of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Fright Night; also Trick ‘r Treat, The Cabin in the Woods, The Blair Witch Project, The Shining, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, any of The Exorcists, Rosemary’s Baby, Dawn of the Dead, the spoof Shaun of the Dead… the list goes on.
She’s the Death-pop artist; the primary exponent of Apocalyptic Pop.
If you like being spooked you know now where to go on Spotify.
Not to mention Stephen King’s ‘It’, with its star turn, the child munching, gutter lurking Pennywise the Clown, because she has an even bigger thing about circuses and her catchphrase is ‘your silly little clown loves you’.
Strangely, that makes me think of the character Sammy Valentino, the washed out but once big name, all-round cabaret performer, now appearing in Neptune’s Bar at the 3-star Solana Hotel in the darkly comic British TV series Benidorm, with his catchphrase “Who loves you!” and how he is spooked by his ‘Number 1 fan’ in the audience carrying a Papier-mâché image of Sammy’s now deceased professional partner, prompting children and adults alike to flee the room in terror.
It’s a surreal moment in a surreal series and surreal is what TULLE does very well. I can’t think offhand of anyone that has cornered a highly specialised market quite so well, no doubt frightening off all potential competition.
But there is much more to her than that.
Indeed she describes the circus as her “universe”. She wrote ‘Devour/The Performer’ about “how it feels constantly to perform and to try to put on the ‘best version’ of yourself, while you’re slowly watching the mask fall. It is a very personal song that describes my entire project.” Sammy Valentino loves you, Tulle.
That project is to bring the sum of the circus and all that it stands for and represents (risk, daring, adventure, excitement and freedom) to the attention of the masses whose lives are much more hollow and one dimensional without it. The extravaganza that contrasts with the bread (free food) handed out by the Romans to pacify the public in the Roman satirist Juvenal’s timeworn phrase ‘bread and circuses’, which applies today as much as it ever did, certainly in the UK.
The trouble is that Juvenal never envisaged that circus ‘mask’ slipping. TULLE got ahead of the game.
Visually, she might have stepped straight out of The Addams Family (and I have commented on her physical similarity to Wednesday Addams in some photo shots previously).
Musically, to me there’s a distinct 1980s vibe about ‘Devour/The Performer’, probably the most pioneering era of contemporary, post war music and one that saw huge innovations in mainstream pop, intelligent/alt-pop and electronic music.
And TULLE somehow manages to throw many of those styles into this song – together with searing rock guitar – one that chops and changes direction more often than an Agatha Christie ‘whodunit?’, while there are more ‘noises off’ than in your typical Shakespearean play.
The representation of a show being enacted comes out of the opening fast drum roll and after that there are at least four distinct sections to it, like a mini operetta, the outro being a perfect interpretation of the style of Fiona Apple, circa. ‘Extraordinary Machine’.
And never at any time does a melody go absent.
And you can read several alternative lyrical interpretations into it. Devour might be the moniker of the performer or it might be (verb) what she hopes the audience will do to her, which could be in either a good or bad way. “Look at me! How I present myself so perfectly. A prodigy. A modern God.”
There’s a suggestion too about a split personality (as with the aforementioned Sammy Valentino).
And there is always the conviction that art mimics life and that she is seeking acceptance in the ‘circus’ that we live in, perhaps because of a physical, mental, or ‘hidden’ disability.
With each successive release I become increasingly impressed by TULLE. She has the songwriting attributes of so many top artists with whom I’ve compared her previously and on this occasion I’m going back to the now sadly retired English artist Emmy the Great, for the deftness of lines like “Oh I can do my routine/step after step when I bleed/just like a well-oiled machine” and “What a bitter little lady/she only wanted sweetness/what a curse/she’ll never learn”…”So she’s forced into the circus/performs to find a purpose/how sad to watch her go.”
They have the true mark of class.
(Continues after Spotify link)
Find her on:
Website: https://www.tullemusic.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tullemusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tullemusic/
