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The Nightingales' Amazing Return
2:08 PM GMT 31/05/2011
During this morning's trawl through the bank holiday weekend email spam I spotted a plea for support from divisive stand-up comedian Stewart Lee.
"Dear all," it read, "Overlooked National Treasures The Nightingales (and Subway Sect) are closing my SOUTH BANK CENTRE AUSTERITY BINGE on Monday 30th May. Here are two great reviews from the current tour. Please twat this if you are a tweeter."
It was a plea for attendance and cultural support on a wet night when most of that London were journeying back from their renovated Cornish fishing village, or still apologising for inappropriate behaviour at the Sunday night barbecue. I'd turned up out of a sense of duty (I'd written a preview piece for the magazine) and curious nostalgia (the Nightingales were one of my teenage indie-kid obsessions) and, truth be told, signs weren't good. With less than ten minutes to go, there were barely ten supporters visible amidst the school-hall fluorescence of The South Bank's Purcell Room. One female punter muttered ominously, something about having "seen him recently, and he looked broken, ruined."
But by the dimming of the lights the hall was healthily half full, and Subway Sect effortlessly dispelled any fears of ruined reunion, the acerbic, attenuated Vic Godard leading his 2011 model band through a nervy set of cheese-wire sharpness, spitting out peculiar pop songs, rich in political anger and English scorn.
Yet nothing in Subway Sect's admittedly excellent return could have prepared for the astonishing revelation of Rob Lloyd's Nightingales. Formed out of the ashes of blackly-comic Birmingham punk upsetters The Prefects, Nightingales Mk. 1 existed from 1979 to '86, Black Country Magic Banders spinning Daedalian indie skronk around Lloyd's slashing gnomic utterances. Since reforming in 2004, Nightingales Mk 2 have survived - like post-punk fellow-travellers The Fall - as an ever-shifting cast of players, a tightly schooled all-ages boot-camp in the employ of one man's absurdist poetic invective.
Recently retrained at Jochen Irmler's Faust Studio, tonight Lloyd and founder Prefects guitarist Alan Apperley field a side barely three weeks old. Bassist Andreas Schmid, a Faust Studio apprentice, is suitably young and severe, the possible leader of some Marxist-Leninist '70s student cell, in academic black suit and socialist haircut. Skinny in black jeans and black western shirt, hair like squid-ink candy floss, rhythm guitarist Matt Wood resembles a teenage Horrors offcast, while from behind her own heavy witch-black fringe ex-Violet Violet drummer Fliss Kitson pounds out the glam-kosmische bin rhythms. As Lloyd takes the stage - stout, bespectacled, wily smile flickering between joy and contempt - the image is complete; it is the embittered Marxist history teacher fronting the school band, the academy in peril.
With no time for nostalgia, tonight The Nightingales ignore any notion of greatest hits in favour of joyous reinvention. Feeding off the hard-drilled energy of these junior initiates, Apperley spins frayed Bo Diddley riffs around Lloyd's tumbling psychedelic eavesdroppings, allowing the singer to recycle, reinvent and repurpose thirty years of vituperative notebook aphorisms, constructing an intense, breathless narrative from the recycled past to the scorched present. And, like some Christ-like curmudgeon, newly risen to grouse again, Lloyd feeds off the audience fervour, growing stronger, yet ever wary; grinning broadly, flicking the Vs, and mouthing "What the f---?!"
With every repurposed song - plus a combative cover of Gary Glitter's I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock & Roll) - the band become yet more powerful, Apperley and the kids locked in a heavy zig-zag groove as Lloyd bellows out caustic images from his mordant world-view, like some Black Country Stuart Staples, holidaying in the window of an Arndale Pound Shop. The cumulative effect is one of euphoric delight, of old knowledge in the hands of new disciples. "Dig the depth of the furrow of mirth that I can plough," sings Lloyd on The Overreactor. Tonight The Nightingales hit an epic new low. Catch them when they're at it again.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 2:08 PM GMT 31/05/2011
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Comments
Comment on this post
The 'Gales never really stopped playing Andrew, journalists merely stopped writing about them. They've been on cracking form for the last half decade, both on record & on stage, such a shame it's taken Stewart Lee's admirable patronage to drag them back onto Mojo's radar...
Posted by Rooksby at 5:46 PM GMT 05/06/2011 Report Abuse
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The 'Gales never really stopped playing Andrew, journalists merely stopped writing about them. They've been on cracking form for the last half decade, both on record & on stage, such a shame it's taken Stewart Lee's admirable patronage to drag them back onto Mojo's radar...
Posted by Rooksby at 5:47 PM GMT 05/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Rooksby
Yeah, such a shame that they're being written about. Bloody Stewart Lee, dragging them to people's attention...
Posted by Carston Pulong at 11:00 AM GMT 06/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Carston Pulong
'Rooksby' is clearly expressing dismay over the fact that the excellent new records alone weren't enough to get journos interested. It's terrible that it took Lee, currently enjoying a great deal of success, to get them noticed again, although all credit to him for taking it upon himself to do so. Now if only someone would release The Lost Plot LP- the new 10" is fantastic!
Posted by Scared Crow at 1:44 PM GMT 08/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Rooksby
BTW are you the guy who writes all the songwriting books?
Posted by Tapio at 3:50 PM GMT 18/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Rooksby
BTW are you the guy who writes all the songwriting books?
Posted by Tapio at 3:51 PM GMT 18/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Rooksby
BTW are you the guy who writes all the songwriting books?
Posted by Tapio at 3:52 PM GMT 18/06/2011 Report Abuse
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Frankly, Idiot Strength single aside, The Nightingales were bloody awful - self-satisfied cod-poetic tosh. Truly one of the very worst indie bands of the 80's.
Posted by Karl_heinz at 5:46 AM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
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Stuart Lee is the biggest cunt in the world. That is a proven fact. If he is funny then why is it ONLY white middle class cunts in his audience, you never see a sambo at a Stuart Lee show, they have too much sense. He's a racist cunt and I hope he fucking dies. Of AIDS. Soon.
Posted by Richard Herring at 1:49 PM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
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Stuart Lee is the biggest cunt in the world. That is a proven fact. If he is funny then why is it ONLY white middle class cunts in his audience, you never see a sambo at a Stuart Lee show, they have too much sense. He's a racist cunt and I hope he fucking dies. Of AIDS. Soon.
Posted by Richard Herring at 1:52 PM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Stuart Lee is the biggest cunt in the world. That is a proven fact. If he is funny then why is it ONLY white middle class cunts in his audience, you never see a sambo at a Stuart Lee show, they have too much sense. He's a racist cunt and I hope he fucking dies. Of AIDS. Soon.
Posted by Richard Herring at 1:52 PM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Richard Herring
I knew a bloke called Tommy Testicles and he was a bigger cunt than Stuart Lee. He wasn't worth the froth off my piss, a proper grade A kiddie fiddling cock smoking scumbag and no mistake. I think he's dead now so at least there's a happy ending. Cunt.
Posted by Sweary Stan at 3:00 PM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweary Stan Write this on your Twitter feed you fucking pussy, how's your mum doing? Does she still lick your spunk encrusted socks clean for you? How sad that you need to nick a user name when you quite clearly have a smart brain in that thick fucking skull.
Posted by Fanny Fishflaps at 5:00 PM GMT 28/06/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Fanny Fishflaps Get to fuck you twitter twatting cunt. How's your arsehole these days, is your dad still pounding it at every opportunity? Good god man it must look like a donkeys yawn by now.
Posted by Sweary Stan at 1:05 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweary We just got your IP. Time for the real fun.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Posted by Sweet Revenge. at 2:11 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweary We just got your IP. Time for the real fun.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Posted by Sweet Revenge. at 2:16 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweet Revenge. Except you haven't got his IP cos that would be illegal. Ha ha ha ha etc.
Posted by Mr. Claypole at 3:15 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Mr. Claypole "We Hacked His Twitter" tis easy.
Posted by Sweet Revenge. at 5:13 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweet Revenge WE HACKED HIS TWITTER must be the gayest thing I've ever read on this site. Well done you chinless cunt. Ha ha ha ha. p.s. I'm not on twitter. Cunt.
Posted by Sweary Stan at 6:01 PM GMT 03/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweary Stan Well some one is using your shit name on there. Nervous, much? Are you the same SS who banks with HSBC?
Posted by Sweet Revenge. at 5:33 PM GMT 04/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweet Revenge. YAWN
Posted by Sweary Stan at 6:10 PM GMT 04/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Sweet Revenge. Just a couple of quick questions. Do you bank at HSBC? Do you like Keith Chegwin? mmm I wonder
Posted by columbo at 6:19 PM GMT 04/07/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: columboThe real Sweary Stan follows Cheggers on Twitter. You ain't no fucking detective.
Posted by Terry Testicles at 3:33 AM GMT 05/07/2011 Report Abuse
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different strokes for different folks... doesn't matter if you don't like it karl, plenty of people do. come see the new line up and confirm that opinion, things have changed since the 1980s ....
Posted by fliss at 9:51 PM GMT 28/09/2011 Report Abuse
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RE: Karl_heinz
different strokes for different folks karl... it;s also been quite a while since the 80's, why don't you come see the new line up for yourself ...
Posted by fliss at 9:54 PM GMT 28/09/2011 Report Abuse
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