Live

Songs tumble past, pasty faced and brimming with mothers pride, as fresh and corruptible now as when they started twenty years back. Age has neither dimmed their rage or diminished their satire - PLAN B,UK

They worked a Ramones model: one cut lead directly into another, the intensity never let up, and the drummer never stopped. It was blistering, confrontational, and threatening. It wasn't quite out of control you could tell from the look in Lloyd's eye that he was still very much running the show but it felt a little bit dangerous, and you don't see that at rock shows much anymore. - POP MATTERS, UK

The show in Brooklyn two weeks ago at Death by Audio was pure fireworks of rhythm, rhyme and frantic melodies, swirling around the serenading, barking, burping, howling Lloyd. The band has been touring extensively and is vehemently tight - captivating from the first manic beats to the last stroke - ROMAN GAMES BLOG, USA

The Nightingales turn out to be bleedin' mesmerising. Theirs is a driving force of sound full of threatening rumbles and fearsome glints, it feels intense and unstoppable. Robert Lloyd cuts a commanding dash, looming across the squiddly stage, growling out the words, staring out the room. They show up today's runty excuses of art rockers for the soiled bags of old washing that they are. - KITTEN PAINTING, UK

The Nightingales best material is delivered with a driving, manic intensity, that makes them sound like The Fall covering Captain Beefheart. Their execution is sharper now but they haven't lost their nervy edge - CHICAGO READER, USA

I'd been warned that Nightingales leader Robert Lloyd could be incredibly mercurial, and I was more than a little worried we'd be catching the band on an off night. (This after hearing that their NYC-area shows had been consistently incendiary.) Well, I needn't have bothered, because from the moment Lloyd stepped in to the spotlight on that tiny stage, there was no let-up. Thankfully the band was more than up to the task of keeping up with his funny, self-deprecating, always splenetic brand of rat-at-at talk-rant (stylistically more cohesive than Mark E Smith's, but with the same level of lacerating bile). They alternated easily between locked-groove jangle and more caustic guitar workouts. Drummer and percussionist Daren Garatt (ex of Pram) was amazing to watch when he came offstage I was surprised to see that he didn't, in fact, have eight arms. - WARPED REALITY, USA

Insult To Injury

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

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

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

It gave me headache - ROCK DELUX, SPAIN

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, USA

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, UK

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, UK

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. - INDEPENDENT, UK

Out Of True

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

No.1 September 06 Playlist Chart - WNYU, USA

**** - MOJO, UK

**** - UNCUT, UK

**** - SUNDAY TIMES, UK

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, UK

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, UK

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, UK
The Nightingales are morally sound, cynically sweet, disturbingly comedic. All carelessly and unconsciously cool, Nightingales are grown men with something to say and sparse, post-punk soundtracks to back them. So, back them - UNPEELED, UK

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, UK

****1/2 - 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, UK

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, UK

Album Of The Year - 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, WWW

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, UK

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. 5/5 - ROCK MIDGETS, UK

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

Let's Think About Living

Track Of The Month - OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY, UK

Single Of The Week - BBC 6 MUSIC, UK

No.1 Single Of The Year - TERRE T/WFMU, USA

Devil In the Detail

***** - This six and a half minutes of pure bliss is undoubtedly my single of the year. - BIRMINGHAM POST, UK

CD Reissues

PIGS ON PURPOSE

***** Reissue Of The Year 2004 & Top Ten Albums Of The Year 2004 - SUNDAY TIMES, UK

HYSTERICS

Highly recommended. - TROUSER PRESS, USA

IN THE GOOD OLD COUNTRY WAY

***** - BIRMINGHAM POST, UK

**** - RECORD COLLECTOR, UK

**** - MOJO, UK

**** - UNCUT, UK

On hearing back after almost twenty years, The Nightingales prove to have predated Pulp and Inspiral Carpets in a way neither of them would admit to. - PENNY BLACK, UK