The Nightingales: wot, no blog review?

The issue of Sounds pictured above was apparently one of the worst selling in the paper's history and is as good a reason as any to love Robert Lloyd and The Nightingales. I think the photo was taken by a girlfriend in his mother's house and imagine that all involved knew they were creating a thing of true ugliness.

I mention the man's solo output for Virgin Records in my review below because it seems to have fallen completely under the radar. The album's out of print and going for high prices on Amazon, while only a few videos of 12" single mixes have surfaced on Youtube. It's a good set of songs, though its production is mostly of its time and contrasts markedly with everything he's recorded before or since. With Elvis Costello having recently cut them loose, the Attractions' Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas lent their support in the studio and I suspect that Lloyd was being groomed as an airwave-conquering punk-poet-laureate in the mould of their former employer. Success eluded him and the last eight years have seen him pick up where he left off on seminal 'Gales classic 'In the Good Old Country Way'. The current band boasts a multi-generational line-up and exhibits more vitality and innovation than the majority of today's up-and-comers. File them alongside The Fall and Pere Ubu as old hands who continually put everyone else to shame. The following should end up on The Fly's website soon.

The Nightingales

Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, Glasgow

6/6/12

****

To fans following frontman Robert Lloyd’s slick late eighties solo work, a return to The Nightingales’ lo-fi pomp must have seemed like an impossibility for the belligerent wordsmith. Now chastened by over a decade of obscurity, he is fronting a modern incarnation of the group, ploughing a wilfully discordant furrow and enjoying something of a critical renaissance. ‘No Love Lost’, his finest album yet, was released in April to universal acclaim while the band's latest line-up has earned a reputation as a powerful live act. Old admirers have drifted back into the fold as a younger generation of listeners is beginning to take notice. Lloyd is on to a good thing and he knows it. “I was dry as a dead nun's cunt in the desert,” he barks by way of an introduction while a blast of fierce garage rock is struck up behind him. A tight eighty minute set ensues before he walks nonchalantly off stage, assured of another small victory. 

Though 2009's 'Little Lambs', 'Crap Lech' and 'Kirklees Ken' are welcomed by aficionados, tonight's set places emphasis on the new record above all else. No audience interaction is attempted and the musicians refuse to break for applause. It's thrilling to watch the songs' complex arrangements come to life and the surplus of ideas on display is nothing short of dizzying. 'Say it With Flowers', a hypnotic, pendulous groover rubs shoulders with the thunderous Beefheartian funk of 'Sentimental Dunce' while 'The Dishwater Kid’’s wind tunnel atmospherics call to mind a strain of obtuse, unfussy shoegaze. If mainstream acceptance is no longer an option for the paunchy, middle-aged Peel-favourite, then he'll have to content himself with further adulation and gushing praise.

Lewis Porteous