Viva Lewes Issue #147 December 2018

ON THIS MONTH: MUSIC
Jam Tarts
Sixty-strong indie choir
“If it hadn’t been for
John Peel, and my mate
Bob who used to make
me mix tapes, Jam
Tarts might be doing
harmonised versions of
Another Day in Paradise,
or Sussudio.”
I’m drinking a cup
of tea in Li Mills’
Brighton kitchen, and
she’s telling me about her musical awakening at
York University. Li is the founder and director
of Brighton’s celebrated 60-strong choir, famous
for their covers of “punk, post-punk and indie”
songs. She also does the song arranging, turning
the raw material into something… well, something
entirely different.
“I was into Phil Collins when I went to York,”
she says. “But that soon changed. I ended up
doing my finals thesis on punk rock. I wrote to
John Peel to ask him if he could help me, and he
practically wrote the thing.” She does a little ‘allpraise’
gesture in the great DJ’s memory.
She shows me the playlist for their Christmas
gigs in the Con Club and St George’s Church,
in Kemp Town, and I guess that Peel would
approve of most of the choices. “The first song
I arranged was Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen.
But then everyone started doing that, so we took
it out of our repertoire. A lot of our songs aren’t
that well known. And the ones you will know,
you might not recognise until halfway through.
I love watching people in the audience trying to
work out that the tango-based harmony they’re
hearing is Every Day I Love You Less and Less by
Kaiser Chiefs.”
‘The Tarts’, as Li calls them, have been going
since 2004, starting
as a group of
Hanover parents and
quickly growing into
something much
bigger. Here are some
quickfire facts I learn:
a third of them are
men; they dress in red,
pink and black; they
have regularly played
Union Chapel, Islington; because no-one wants
to leave and things get a bit messy beyond sixty,
there’s very rarely room for new members to
join. Li is just mad about Nick Cave, so there’ll
always be one of his numbers in there. Oh, and
they have legendary after-show parties.
She’s delighted to be returning to the Con Club,
where she has performed (supporting The Wave
Pictures) in one of the other bands she’s involved
with, a “lo-fi, multi-instrumental four-piece of
Tarts”, called Suburban Death Twitch. “The
acoustics are great there,” she says. “It’ll be a
squeeze, though”. It’s not just the sixty choir
members, you see. “For our bigger gigs we’re accompanied
by musicians: a pianist, a cellist, two
trumpeters, a percussionist, a violinist.”
All the songs in the December shows will have a
‘winter’ theme, to give the evening a festive feel.
But not corny festive, of course. “Some of the
songs might not feel particularly Christmassy,”
she concludes. “When Nick Cave wrote Fifteen
Feet of Pure White Snow, I don’t think he was
thinking about the stuff that comes out of the
sky.” Alex Leith
The Jam Tarts are playing at the Con Club, 20th
December, 7.30pm, £13 from Si’s Sounds/Union
Music and lewesconclub.com
Photo by Ollie Dolling
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