There's a moment towards the end of 'King Rocker' - Stewart Lee's excellent documentary about Nightingales main man Robert Lloyd, where Lee notes that the singer's record collection includes albums by 'Krautrock' pioneers
Amon Düül alongside those of legendary purveyor of "cowboy
psychedelia" Lee Hazelwood. This makes perfect sense, he says. As it represents the
whole spread of The Nightingales sound. An observation which Lloyd, laughing, does
nothing to disabuse.
In the unlikely event that anyone listens to The
Nightingales latest album, 'The Awful Truth' expecting anything different, they
will be disappointed.
Not that that is likely. Since their reappearance in 2004
following an 18 year hiatus the group, or more specifically sole constant Rob
Lloyd, have proved themselves more than capable of building on their 80s legacy
and adding to it in irreverently, raucously, joyously unrestrained fashion.
The Awful Truth - the group's 13th and their 10th since re-emerging, finds Lloyd, alternating between riotously berating the iniquities of the modern world, and contemplating his own mortality - legacy perhaps of a stroke he suffered a few years back.
The accompanying music switches between the familiar off-kilter, angular guitaring of their 80s iteration, to heavier power chord driven numbers, harking back to their 2018 album 'Perish The Thought'.
The single, "The Same Old Riff" - released in March, sets the tone. On the surface, it's a trademark self deprecating comment on the number of familiar guitar riffs that have punctuated the band's output, including - not surprisingly, this album. The guitar line thunders along somewhere between Bowie's 'Queen Bitch and Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' (Well, if you have to pilfer.. pilfer the best!) But in fact the riff in question is that of "the privileged" endlessly blaming "the powerless".
Opening track "The New Emperor's New Clothes" is no less politically direct or unashamed, up-cycling the apocalyptic riff from Ash's 'Jesus Says' on a number that also finds Lloyd markedly less than pleased with the way things are.
Highlight of the album though has to be 'The Best Revenge' which starts in typically jerky, meandering fashion before roaring off-road into a riffed tag line that takes no prisoners. This topped by an ironic US accented voice-over that Lee Hazelwood himself might have approved of, bookended with the line that arguably best answers any questions over the origin of certain guitar lines: "To refrain from imitation is the best revenge". Those riffs, they may be familiar, but imitation this certainly ain't.
The other ten tracks on the album are no less memorable. Half familiar riffs with subtle nods to other purveyors of similar (outside) left field sounds; The Wedding Present ('Warm Up'), The Fall ('Joyce' and 'Morning After Mouth'). Acid-Country and Western/Hawaiian pastiche on the delightful 'The Princess and the Piss Artist', and - at a stretch maybe, BLURT (Gates of Heaven Ajar). There's even what passes for a reflective, slow romantic number in 'Just Before'- a sign of Lloyd's age - he'll be 66 in June, catching up perhaps ? 'Perish the thought' indeed.
'The Awful Truth' is …. that, 46 years on from their inception, 21 years on from the end of their self enforced silence, Lloyd and his band are still in scintillating form.
Treasure them, the world needs maverick geniuses. In these uncertain times, arguably now more than ever.
Essential Information
The Nightingales Week in Outsideleft
An Introduction to the Nightingales Week →
Robert Lloyd: The Sunday Interview →
The Awful Truth: The 2025 Fire Records’ LP reviewed by David O’Byrne →
The Happy Shopper: Andreas →
Guitar Talk with Jim →
The Happy Shopper: Fliss →
King Rocker - review by Martin Devenney →
The Happy Shopper: Jim →
Three Big Bass Questions for Andreas →
The Happy Shopper: Robert →
Teethgraters: The records The Nightingales would go to the ends of the earth to never hear again →
