Genuine is born not becomes, a characteristic that is often confused with youthful ardor or a nature naifan attitude that only the passage of time can define with accuracy.
Tagliente, sarcastic, angry, cultured and predictable, Robert Lloyd is one of the dark and seminal figures of English punk-rock, a musician who can undoubtedly be defined as a genuine. Activates since 1979, loved by John Peel and known for supporting Clash, The Slits and Subway Sect on some tours, the Nightingales are the creature of Robert Lloyd but also one of the longest -running punk formations, authoritative agitators of the rock'n'roll standards and skilled sonic disturbers like the Ballthday Parties.
“The Awful Truth” is their brilliant manifesto for 2025, a corrosive journey into the collective memory of rock music, where the Bowie of “Queen Bitch” and “Hang on Yourself” is demerged in the serial creator of riff (“Same Old Riff”) or where Mekons, Fairport Convention and Modern Lovers become a single combo (“The New Emperor's New Clothes”).
The serial deduction of rock iconography corresponds to a sagacity of the texts that deserves to be analyzed in detail. Fortunately, the music is of equal intensity and ingenuity, even light and cantabile in the pop-prok-rock lops of “The Men, Again”, surreal in the ballad by country-crotoner of “The Princess and the Piss Artist”, hot and pounding as only the punk can be in “Warm Up” and even enigmatic and left in the splendid “Just Before”.
The songs of The Nightingales follow one another as in a grotesque tragicomic theatrical representation, texts and music evoke situations ordinary characters who become extraordinary without their knowledge, while jazz-punk lops at the Vic Godard (the intertwining between dark bass agreements and guitar dissonances of “The Best Revenge”) alternate with ebbre and chaotic ballads (“Giddy Aunt”) which confuse the waters like the monkey of the famous picture of Tommaso Salini (1575-1625) which stands on the cover.
“The Awful Truth” is a disc that knows no respite, both when he puts and sideways (“Joyce”), and when flirting with the most classic pop and rock (“The Limpest Bark”, “All Smiles”). The Nightingales know how to put order in chaos without ever being predictable or mannerist, even managing to obtain from a song of the fairy tales of Walt Disney an original folk-pop (“The Gates of Heaven Ajar”). Andreas Schmid (Faust) on bass, Fliss Kitson (Violet Violet) on drums and choirs, guitarist James Smith (Damo Suzuki), Randy Kuntz alla Tuba and Natalie Mason alla Viola, complete the staff. UNMISSABLE.
13/04/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
