The Nightingales: No Love Lost

Evergreen Peel faves return for belated seventh album.

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The Nightingales were either a more robust Fall or a brilliant indie Beefheart; they recorded a lot of John Peel sessions, and their label Vindaloo gave the world both We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It and the great Ted Chippington.

The Nightingales, out of Birmingham via The Prefects, were an extraordinarily witty, angular and excellent band, led by the charismatically dour Robert Lloyd, who even briefly enjoyed a solo career on Virgin Records. Like many great bands, they split up with no accolades. Also like many great bands, they are back again, with a line-up that prunes members from various other line-ups.

This time round, the sound is possibly a bit less angular, which means they sound like Black Sabbath trying to remember what XTC sound like.

Songs like Born Yesterday and Mutton To Lamb riff and spar like nobody’s business, while surprise ballad The World Of Nothing Really sees Lloyd unravel like a heartless Guy Garvey.

David Quantick

David Quantick is an English novelist, comedy writer and critic, who has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. A former staff writer for the music magazine NME, his writing credits have included On the HourBlue JamTV Burp and Veep; for the latter of these he won an Emmy in 2015.