Album Review: Nightingales - "The Last Laugh"

 

There's cult bands and then there's the Nightingales. Even in their '80s heyday, they were very much an underground outfit but in the intervening 40 years, the legend has grown and grown with the likes of Stewart Lee singing their praises and so it is in 2022 that, having mostly previously encountered them on various '80s indie compilations, I finally find myself listening to a Nightingales album in full.

Honestly, I'm not even sure where to begin. Similar to the Fall or Half Man Half Biscuit, there's something brilliantly uncategorisable about the Nightingales and The Last Laugh is the sound of a band who've been around the block enough times to be genuinely comfortable with their sound just kicking loose and making the album that they feel like because, hey, who's gonna argue with them at this point. As such, it's a good glimpse into the weird and frequently wonderful world of this group.

It frequently goes off on unexpected tangents such as the way Frances Sokolow goes from a dark drone to almost Beach Boys style classic pop and then back again. It's also a more accessible album than you'd expect with the likes of Spread Yourself Out's twisted rockabilly or the bluesy strum of Bloody Breath packing a melody that, if like myself you're new to this band, you might find a bit surprising. Song titles like I Needed The Money At The Time and the BoZo-bashing Sunlit Uplands (Turn That Frown Upside Down) which memorably refers to our clown of an ex-PM as "the king of all the big girls' blouses" showing a sly sense of humour lurking underneath as well. Lloyd's excellent vocal interplay with Fliss Kitson is something else that elevates this album up as well, kind of like a post-punk Eugene Reynolds and Fay Fife - listen to Mind Of Stone with its skittering guitars and Lloyd's bluesy growl and Kitson's warble working in perfect tandem for proof. The psychedelic freakout of Mark Meets No Mark and the gentle countrified My Sweet Friend, meanwhile, is a suitably contrary but great one-two to finish this one on. 

Swinging between genres like a monkey on Tizer but never losing you through unlistenability, this really does prove why the Nightingales are a band who command such a loyal following all these years later. Whether you're a veteran follower of the band or just discovering them the way this writer is, The Last Laugh is definitely well worth a listen if you want something a bit different to listen to this month.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure,
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Album Review: The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs - "All The Covers (And More)"

Image
  Covers albums are an odd beast and the prospect of a 40 track one would've been a cause for me to shudder in certain circumstances. However, given that the band behind this are Nite Songs faves the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, a quick cursory glance at the tracklisting will tell you that we're on safe ground. Hand on heart, quite a few of the tracks are already available on previous Cheetahs albums but it still doesn't make their takes on the Saints' Know Your Product  and the Dictators' Faster And Louder  any less fun. There's the odd mis-step in here - their speeded up take on the Dogs D'Amour's Debauchery  ends up sounding more like Queen's Stone Cold Crazy . But the good stuff here far outweighs the bad with the group teaming up with none other than Cherie Currie for a good run through the Runaways' Cherry Bomb and the group adding a much needed dose of extra urgency to Motley Crue's Livewire  to remind you that the Crue actually had a f
Read more