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Review: 'Nightingales, The'
'Perish the Thought'   

-  Label: 'Tiny Global Productions'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '5.10.18.'

Our Rating:
Yes Birmingham's most obtuse band are back with another album of dark brooding weird and wonderful music. Having already heard some of these songs played live at Rebellion in August just after I got the album to review I have to say they are well worth seeing live on tour with the incredible Near Jazz Experience this autumn.

The album opens with Wrong Headed Man a song I'd have called Hey Alligator but that's just me, it's a typical song by The Nightingales dark dank and with lyrics about who knows what just as you'd expect them to be, with Fliss Kitsons vocals working as a good counterpoint to Robert Lloyds normal mumbling.

The World And His Wife are all saving up to buy the new album on Vinyl or something like that as Fliss tries to sound a bit like Siouxie Soux as the normal wordy melodrama unfolds and the clattering drums and guitars tie it all together.

Enemy Of Promise sounds almost rapped in places while going off in all sorts of directions at once it's a mesmeric tsunami of ideas and sounds crashing into one another in typical Nightingales fashion.

Lucky Dip is really the bands attempt to sound like the contents of a Jamboree bag although Roberts voice is more like a licorice cigar than a pack of smarties all sorts of odd things are going on musically as the drums come in and out and then the guitars have a mental breakdown to freak us all out before they start singing about Jesus Christ being a refugee.

Chaff sounds like a combine harvester rolling over your brain as a Chiffchaff struggles to get out the way this song is well wheaty. Eventually that closes side one has some real funky bass and odd yelps and not much else.

The b-side opens with Big Dave that is a typically atypical ordeal of a song about well Big Dave it seems to be ramming three songs into one being an urgent and slightly perplexing history of what happened to Big Dave that in places re-works the old Killer Pussy song Dial a Teen although I'm sure that's accidental as its such an obscure song.

Zero At the Bone has guitar parts at odds with the drums and descending vocals that take us on a trip to the darkest recesses of the brain. You Don't Know What You're Doing could be Robert listing all the things he's allegedly done wrong over the bands long career or a list of other grievances as the music clatters along and his vocals seem even deeper than usual.

The Last Minute is repeated in an almost slovenly manner by the backing vocalists while Robert tells us about what happens to him at The Last Minute in a typical Nightingales fashion. They then make an unlikely claim that (I'm A) People Person yeah right as a life making obtuse inaccessible underground indie music is the very definition of that, oh and yes I'd rather like to think of Robert glad handing and making everyone feel comfortable at all times.

The album closes with It Is that almost sounds Shoegazey at the start while Fliss is singing and then the raging guitars come in and Robert takes over and we've gone somewhere a lot darker more like a shot of Amphetamines to the system as the music swirls around and breaks down and off in odd ways as Fliss comes back in this is a very cool musical melodrama across its 6 minutes that of course goes a bit mad with the guitars during Roberts second verse this a cool way to close yet another cool album from the ever reliable The Nightingales.

Go and order a copy from https://uknightingales.bandcamp.com/album/perish-the-thought
  author: simonovitch

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