Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, Monday May 23rd 2011
The Nightingales are what happens to 1970s-sired latch-key kids if you
leave them alone with a CD of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, a
DVD of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club and the Bumper Book of
Existentialism For Boys. After more than thirty years in the saddle,
with only occasional sojourns into solo careers and Svengali-ing
long-lost girl band We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It for
distraction, one-time John Peel stalwarts live experience is an intense
and relentless chug of skewed meat n' two veg avant-garage-punk laced
with vocalist and wordsmith Robert Lloyd's very English absurdist
world-view of how (post) modern life is rubbish. Think Pere Ubu if
they'd grown up in the shadows of Birmingham's Bull Ring rather than
the Flats in Cleveland.
Since reforming in 2004, The Nightingales have pretty much picked up
where they left off, with three albums and another pending to showcase
Lloyd's dry anthropological observations set to a wonderfully trad,
ferociously luddite backing. Just how they ended up recording 2009's
Insult To Injury album and the forthcoming The Lost Plot opus with
legendary Krautrock madman Hans Joachim-Irmler of Faust is anybody's
guess, but the liaison certainly hasn't hippified their more caustic
edges in any way. Which should keep comic Stewart Lee happy when he
hosts a week of events on London’s South Bank shortly which features a
top quality double bill of The 'Gales with Vic Godard and the Subway
Sect.
The band's current line-up is led by Lloyd, still looking as much like
Malcolm Hardee's stockier twin as he did in 1981, and guitarist Alan
Apperley, whose scuzzed-up Bo Diddleyesque wig-outs would give Wilko
Johnson a run for his money, and whose involvement with Lloyd dates
back to a joint tenure in Birmingham's first punk band the Prefects
(who Frank Skinner unsuccessfully auditioned for, fact fans).
Charcoal-coloured de-mob suits remain de rigeur, both for the elder
statesmen and for the newbies, bassist and Faust Studio ex-pat Andreas
Schmid, Fliss Kitson stomping away on tom-tom and cow-bell friendly
drum-kit, and Matt Wood, who appears to be Syd Barrett’s elfin
twelve-year old love child, but who plays guitar like a demon.
Sloping quietly onstage mere minutes after an oddly nervous comedy set
by support act and long-term fellow traveller and foil Ted Chippington,
there's pretty much no let up from the opening launch into Ace of
Hearts, with each song seguing into each other with barely a pause for
breath. Not that Lloyd looks like he's likely to break into a sweat,
even if he does throw a few shapes on a blistering and taboo-busting
cover of Gary Glitter's 1972 Glam Rock smasheroonie I Didn't Know I
Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock n' Roll).
He may be one of Britain's greatest unsung lyricists, but at various
points Lloyd folds his arms like a testy geography teacher or else
stands in the corner like a naughty schoolboy. Pretty much the only
words he utters outside of the songs is to tell one over-refreshed
punter during Only My Opinion – a re-worded take on lost a capella
classic Well Done, Underdog, and the nearest thing here to a greatest
hit - to “shut the fuck up, by the way!”
The band, meanwhile, roar away like billy-o, a well-oiled rock n' roll
disguise for Lloyd's music-hall barkering on gloriously titled ditties
Workshy Wunderkind and Wot, No Blog?, which sees Apperley and Wood
twanging away in wonderfully contrary directions. Kitson, meanwhile,
pounds away with such ferocity that at one point her kit all but
collapses into her until a plucky local hero leaps up to straighten
things out. A closing Dick The Do-Gooder brings proceedings to an
earthly climax, then Lloyd and co skulk off towards the bar, no fuss,
no questions asked. Even after all these years, it's the Nightingale
way.
The List, May 2011
ends
The Nightingales are what happens to 1970s-sired latch-key kids if you
leave them alone with a CD of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, a
DVD of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club and the Bumper Book of
Existentialism For Boys. After more than thirty years in the saddle,
with only occasional sojourns into solo careers and Svengali-ing
long-lost girl band We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It for
distraction, one-time John Peel stalwarts live experience is an intense
and relentless chug of skewed meat n' two veg avant-garage-punk laced
with vocalist and wordsmith Robert Lloyd's very English absurdist
world-view of how (post) modern life is rubbish. Think Pere Ubu if
they'd grown up in the shadows of Birmingham's Bull Ring rather than
the Flats in Cleveland.
Since reforming in 2004, The Nightingales have pretty much picked up
where they left off, with three albums and another pending to showcase
Lloyd's dry anthropological observations set to a wonderfully trad,
ferociously luddite backing. Just how they ended up recording 2009's
Insult To Injury album and the forthcoming The Lost Plot opus with
legendary Krautrock madman Hans Joachim-Irmler of Faust is anybody's
guess, but the liaison certainly hasn't hippified their more caustic
edges in any way. Which should keep comic Stewart Lee happy when he
hosts a week of events on London’s South Bank shortly which features a
top quality double bill of The 'Gales with Vic Godard and the Subway
Sect.
The band's current line-up is led by Lloyd, still looking as much like
Malcolm Hardee's stockier twin as he did in 1981, and guitarist Alan
Apperley, whose scuzzed-up Bo Diddleyesque wig-outs would give Wilko
Johnson a run for his money, and whose involvement with Lloyd dates
back to a joint tenure in Birmingham's first punk band the Prefects
(who Frank Skinner unsuccessfully auditioned for, fact fans).
Charcoal-coloured de-mob suits remain de rigeur, both for the elder
statesmen and for the newbies, bassist and Faust Studio ex-pat Andreas
Schmid, Fliss Kitson stomping away on tom-tom and cow-bell friendly
drum-kit, and Matt Wood, who appears to be Syd Barrett’s elfin
twelve-year old love child, but who plays guitar like a demon.
Sloping quietly onstage mere minutes after an oddly nervous comedy set
by support act and long-term fellow traveller and foil Ted Chippington,
there's pretty much no let up from the opening launch into Ace of
Hearts, with each song seguing into each other with barely a pause for
breath. Not that Lloyd looks like he's likely to break into a sweat,
even if he does throw a few shapes on a blistering and taboo-busting
cover of Gary Glitter's 1972 Glam Rock smasheroonie I Didn't Know I
Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock n' Roll).
He may be one of Britain's greatest unsung lyricists, but at various
points Lloyd folds his arms like a testy geography teacher or else
stands in the corner like a naughty schoolboy. Pretty much the only
words he utters outside of the songs is to tell one over-refreshed
punter during Only My Opinion – a re-worded take on lost a capella
classic Well Done, Underdog, and the nearest thing here to a greatest
hit - to “shut the fuck up, by the way!”
The band, meanwhile, roar away like billy-o, a well-oiled rock n' roll
disguise for Lloyd's music-hall barkering on gloriously titled ditties
Workshy Wunderkind and Wot, No Blog?, which sees Apperley and Wood
twanging away in wonderfully contrary directions. Kitson, meanwhile,
pounds away with such ferocity that at one point her kit all but
collapses into her until a plucky local hero leaps up to straighten
things out. A closing Dick The Do-Gooder brings proceedings to an
earthly climax, then Lloyd and co skulk off towards the bar, no fuss,
no questions asked. Even after all these years, it's the Nightingale
way.
The List, May 2011
ends
Comments