Tea and Biscuits

[klward]

"Heyla, heyla... c'mon, you know it now!"

"Heyla, heyla." The chant echoes back and forth, from the bedisked and furrowed ceiling of the Enmore Theatre, to the luminous blue stage. Row upon row of partially lit heads sway and sound, else glance around them with twitchy shoulders, as three layers of drumming abrades the third wall.

"Heyla... Heyla... you're doing voodo!" Never ceasing to drum, the central figure seems to smile with his entire body. "You're doing voodoo now!"

I came to The Tea Party so recently that I completely missed their reunion tour. I won't apologise for this: I spent my adolescence in a wasteland when it came to contemporary music, listening to Bach on cassette tape and attending the opera with my Nanna. When they toured last year upon the release of The Ocean at the End, I was in Europe, but now you may picture me travelling through Tuscany with Interzone Mantras playing as loud as my earbuds will permit in order to drown out the rest of the coach party.

But this is why I was so impressed with the T-shirt on the fellow standing two ahead of David and myself in the queue outside. It was the kind of grey that was originally black and the seams were splitting. Following a long list of locations and dates, it read THE EDGE OF TWILIGHT 1996. We were here, in the considerable humidity, to celebrate this album's 20^th anniversary. Had this man really bought his T-shirt on that first tour, treasured it in some bottom drawer and resurrected it for the occasion? I might have tapped his fraying shoulder, and asked, except that the line started moving and I am besides, still shy.

The Tea Party are one of the most dazzlingly competent live acts that I have ever seen (which includes three different productions of The Magic Flute). How to explain what I mean? Perhaps I can cast it in literary terms. This trio are such superb co-writers, with such an eclectic vocabulary, that they can slip effortlessly from conventional, if evocative, third person perspective to omniscient narration, then quote relevant classics while engaging in intimate first person, and never once losing or confusing the reader: all this, in Jeff Martin's thrilling, dark-honey voice.

And they did quote, segueing from their own "Sister Awake" to "Paint it Black" by The Rolling Stones, and back without so much as a tonal change. They progressed similarly but with more drums from "Turn the Lamp Down Low" through to the blues stalwart "Love in Chains", and thence to the voodoo interlude. "That was your first voodoo ceremony? How did you like it?" Shortly after, as a prelude to "Coming Home", Martin asked if there were, perhaps, witches in the audience. "Ah, I can feel you, sisters."

You don't have to know that Martin contributed a musical evocation of the Abbey of Thelema to the Windows To The Sacred exhibition in 2013, to pick up on the group's philosophy. Martin has "learned in the East and prayed in the West", and searched for what he lost, "beneath a rose, behind a cross."* But here, for the first time, I was presented with a visual record of his explorations. With each song, fire swirled and exquisitely patterned tiles spun from the depths of the Alhambra, but several, like "Fire in the Head", featured an exquisitely detailed graphic. Starting from the radiant eye of the Illuminati, we panned down Lucifer enthroned with crown in hand, yet chained to base matter, flanked with columns whose plinths bore the legend SILENT and KNOWING.

"Correspondences" revealed the angel that adorns the album's cover, but from the side instead of the front. Although mourning angels are quite a popular motif in Victorian cemetery art, this is undoubtedly the most famous. The Angel of Grief was created by the sculptor William Story in 1894 to surmount the tomb of his wife in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Here, the zodiac wheeled above it, another celestial creature bound to earth. This performance of the song was dedicated by Martin to the victims of that morning's shootings in Paris, deploring "that such a beautiful religion as Islam can be used to justify such hate."

"Sister Awake" commenced with what I am fairly certain was the Stele of Revealing, scrolling down to reveal a women praying in the lotus position, embraced by the hundred arms of Shiva. The plinth supporting them both bore the wedjat eye. And speaking of arms, have I mentioned the dancers? Even before the voodoo, certain portions of the audience could simply not keep still. As per the Enmore's policy, they were shepherded to the side aisle of the Circle, where they swooped and writhed, raising their arms to the heavens and bringing them down in the age-old gesture of respect.

The entire album was played, together with quotations and a sizzling sitar interlude. Autumn leaves scattered and roses unfurled, and once the echoes of "Walk With Me" finally faded from our ears, we had a brief interval in which to fortify ourselves. What the band were doing I cannot even guess, because we came back to the aural havoc of "The Writing's On the Wall", followed by the mournful rolling of "The Ocean at the End". Somehow, that song salvages a part of my adolescence that was not irredeemably staid, with a beach house and friends drinking passionfruit cooler beneath a vast array of stars. Likewise, "Heavens Coming Down" is a very personal song for me... and, apparently, for most of the rest of the audience.

But then they started on "Save Me".

"When there is no truth, let's end this lie tonight.
This is easy to understand, without your best fight.
But I see a new sun rising in the east..."

And before we knew it, they were quoting again. The Enmore's art deco roof was just about blown off when we realised we were in the middle of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".

They made us work for it, but eventually they returned to the stage just one more time. And when Jeff Martin starts talking about forgiving those who trespass against us, it can only mean one thing. I jumped up and ran to the side aisle. Stood poised with the rest, awaiting the plunge into pandemonium as I have so many times before in clubs and darkened rooms, ready to raise my hands and fly as best I can. I can never resist temptation and who, as The Tea Party put fingers to their sitars, their guitars, their keyboards, drums and hurdy-gurdys, would ever want to?

* Quoting "Samsara" from TRIPtych and "One Step Closer Away" from Seven Circles.

The photo heading this article was taken by Evan Paliatseas and is used by his gracious permission. It is not Open License: frankly, I don't know that it's even legal.