Insult To Injury

This is a living, breathing beast of an album - ARTROCKER MAGAZINE, UK

This is their fiercest, most lacerating album yet, better by a good margin than the mid-1980s Pigs on Purpose...and that was excellent - BLURT, USA

The Nightingales have been responsible for some of the most genuinely innovative minority music of the past three decades. What's more with the release of Insult To Injury they have significantly raised their game. In fact, this is undoubtedly their finest moment - THE QUIETUS, UK

Boozy and deranged, Insult to Injury is how the new Franz record ought to sound - VICE, UK

This album had me hitting the button on the CD player to skip to the next track, and then the next track, and so on until it ended. If it wasn't for the slightly enjoyable and humourous Monty Python styled Former Florist To The Queen then this album would have been struggling to get even a two-star rating - MAVERICK, UK

Their freshest and most subtly intoxicating work to date - OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY, UK

They sound wired, edgy, boozy and as dangerous as ever, like a new band full of that energy that comes with those first moves and not a band who’ve been doing this since the start of punk. Robert Lloyd really shouldn’t be this good after all these years, should he? - THE ORGAN, UK

The new album from the 'Gales is their finest for 27 years. Start here and work backwards - SUNDAY TIMES, UK

Unlovable as ever. The Nightingales remain hard work for precious little gain - MOJO, UK

Its no wonder that they are on the label of the Krautrock legends Faust. The Nightingales capability with sound and playfulness is endless. Their rough unruliness is very charming - ECLIPSED, Germany

Insult to Injury is probably as good as the Nightingales have ever been. This isn’t just an 80's band doing good but it’s a fine record period, and puts most contemporary (and younger) “post-punk” bands to shame - SOUNDS XP, UK

It's time The Nightingales received as much recognition as their reformed conteporaries such as Gang Of Four and Wire - and given that they've just released their best album yet, their story is far from over - ARTROCKER ONLINE, UK

It is a disturbing, funny, hard to classify, intelligent and interesting piece of rock music. Melancholic, sarcastic, with great musical skills and a charismatic frontman - a mix that makes it easy to see why John Peel loved them - THE GAP, Germany

This album is uneven, undisciplined and overlong - UNCUT, UK
The Nightingales for me are like Big Flame and Faust: groups that I admire and respect and which seem to have impeccable ethics, but that in truth I can not listen to. I tried. It gave me headache - ROCK DELUX, Spain

The Nightingales are back with a cool, noisy album featuring avant-garde, punk and some great cosmic music. The album scores with it's bulkiness, bittersweet tricksy-ness and down to earth pop melancholy. Don't miss their tour in Spring 2009! - SKRUG, Austria

Insult To Injury combines stuff capable of being on the radio with utterly entertaining experiments. Thrilling. - NOTES, Germany

Indignant lyrics with a punk accompaniment that deals a firm clip around the ear to all the pipsqueaks out there acting as pretenders to their anarchic throne - LEEDS GUIDE, UK

Beefheartian honk, skronk and groove mixed with discordant falling-apart-at-the-seams rock 'n' roll. Everything sprinkled over the top with those surreal streams of swiftly decaying consciousness lyrics - ROCK A ROLLA, UK

Band reunions seem almost compulsory these days, but few have done it with as much purpose as The Nightingales. Since re-teaming in 2004, they have released three terrific albums and a wedge of great singles. Insult To Injury, co-produced in Germany with Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler, may well prove to be their best yet - CLASSIC ROCK, UK

This record can teach a lesson to the dozens of kids' bands pretending to be 'cool' on myspace, talking of post-punk without knowing the real thing - RUMORE, Italy

What's Not To Love?

What's Not to Love takes all the elements that powered 'Out of True' the furious drumming, the lyrical vitriol, the chaotic, post-everything guitar work up a notch. The six songs are so clamorous, so headlong, so brutal that the record seems like a milestone. You can tell that the band's been playing together for a while by the way it continually skirts the edge of chaos and continually fails to fall in. Opening cut 'Plenty of Spare' emerges out of a rapid-fire maelstrom of a-melodic guitar notes and furious drum skitters, an almost free-jazz ooze that somehow births a song. Or, sort of a song. It's too complicated to be punk, too hard and fast to be anything else...maybe it's time for the Nightingales to invent their own genre. After all, it's not like they ever fit very well into the existing ones. - DUSTED

Robert Lloyd, the Black Country Captain Beefheart, steamrolls his unwitting inheritors. Lesser talents plough the comeback trail, but the Nightingales press onwards - scratchy guitars scribbling furiously over exploratory drumming - the group reaching new heights in its third decade. - SUNDAY TIMES

It's hard to warm to an album when the first track opens with almost an entire minute of out-of-tune guitar noise. 'Plenty Of Spare' gives us this, and sadly, more. This is a deeply un-enjoyable song, having no regard to rhythm, melody, or indeed any sense of cohesion. - THIS IS FAKE DIY

The 80's John Peel icons still stand tall as an alternative art rock giants. A krautrock/post-punk/rockabilly/avant-garde attack is iced with the machine gun literary license of Robert Lloyd. Furious, twisted, grand prix guitars leave the power pop pretenders in the lay by. What's not to Love? about The Nightingales? Nowt!!! - INDEPENDENT

The Nightingales remain as splendidly difficult as ever with new mini album What's Not To Love?
Plenty of Spare opening in full on Captain Beefheart mode with Robert Lloyd intoning in oblique spoken word about his ideal woman ('maybe not too keen on mushrooms or bananas') over discordant jazz n rockabilly guitar and skittering drums.
Things remain defiantly individual with the clattering punky surge of Eleven Fingers. Lloyd's monotone sounding positively breathless. Bang Out Of Order is a rattling dose of train rhythm rockabilly punk pop that itches the soles of your feet, then it's into a marvellously deconstructed drunk in the desert cover of Nancy Sinatra 'hit' Drummer Man with guest vocalist Sabina Shah, a riff pumping ramshackle Overreactor and, finally, the splendidly off its head Wot No Blog? which begins with Egyptian snake-dance swaying tones before crashing into scratchy punk and a mid-section that sees Lloyd's voice possessed by some howling Armenian or similarly eastern European shaman. What's not to love, indeed - TASTY

Out Of True

No.1 Record Of The Year 2006 - TERRE T/WFMU

No.1 September 06 Playlist Chart - WNYU

5/5 - ROCK MIDGETS

****1/2 - BIRMINGHAM POST

**** - MOJO

**** - UNCUT

**** - SUNDAY TIMES

This is that rarest of achievements: a comeback album that actually adds to an already illustrious reputation. Out of True finds the Nightingales not merely back to their best, but actually improved. - DAILY TELEGRAPH

This is a record that manages to sound more youthful and vibrant and packed with genuine humour and vitriol that any band currently pedalling themselves as post-punk, or anything near it, will no doubt be left feeling deflated - TASTY

After 20 years off, the Nightingales made a comeback with the outstanding album of the year for sheer brilliance of writing and originality. It's eclectic and awkward, the lyrics from punk original Robert Lloyd are both profound and obtuse. Whilst guitar melodies are hurled around like sweaters in a playground scrap, songs with titles like 'UK Randy Mom Epidemic' and 'Taking Away the Stigma of Free School Dinners' worm their way into that itchy bit of the brain that so seldom gets scratched. - GUARDIAN UNLIMITED: ARTS BLOG

The first Nightingales LP for 20 years is their most cohesive work to date. A top album of this or any year, 'Out Of Tue' is out of this world. - INDEPENDENT

Wonderful stuff! Out Of True is yet another superior release from Birmingham's finest. Indeed, you won't hear many better albums this year. - BIRMINGHAM POST

The best of the many British ensembles that have attempted to anglicise Beefheart's highly evolved primitivism, and helped make this venerable West Midlands outfit's current album, 'Out of True', the finest of their career. - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Out Of True is a tremendously refreshing listen. If a band can pull off Captain Beefheart-like riffs and not alienate the listener, they have achieved a delicate balance that will intrigue the listener to discover more of their music. Needless to say, this album is a success in my book. The polyrhythmic nature of 'Born in Birmingham' and the mysterious lyrics all drive me to want to listen to everything they ever recorded. It is truly wonderful stuff. - COVALENT BOND

The band do not seem to have even begun to mellow with age. In fact this record sounds as if it could almost be a debut album such is the freshness and the attitude. I really hope that people take this release on face value as a new record and don't try to compare it to anything because this really is worthy of a place in anyones CD player. - LIFE

One of the UK's greatest maverick rock acts has with Out of True dropped a true bombshell of an album. So cynically cool throughout, these are 14 tracks of alternative, glam, indie, blues rock... Just how many different genre boxes do they want to check?
Uniquely weird but never pretentious, it is music that inspires and makes you think, and this album just inspires wonderment and confusion, do you dance or do you light up a joint and let the oddness wash over you? It's dedicated to John Peel, a man who knew innovative and fresh music when he heard it. Let his legacy be your guide - I think he would have approved. - ROCK MIDGETS

The Nightingales' first new album for twenty years shows they are still as difficult, original and wonderful as ever. - BRUM BEAT

If Don Van Vliet had not come out of the Mojave, but off a slip from justdown from Spaghetti Junction, this is the record he may well have made. It's brilliant stuff. Songs on 'Out Of True' sound cynical and weather-beaten, sure, but there is a kick in the legs, a distinct grit and canter that shows they've come back at the right time. No half-arsed comeback this, it is the sound of a voice rediscovered. - VANITY PROJECT