The current renaissance for The Nightingales continues, with the band's latest Classic Gales record The Last Laugh. This time recorded in Valencia with Jorge Bornabe at the controls at Elefante Studios. The current song writing team of Robert Lloyd and Fliss Kitson continue the bands rich vein of albums in the last 10 years or so. They are joined by Andi Schmid and Jim Smith.
The album opens with Fliss Kitsons drum intro to Sunlit Uplands (Turn that Frown Upside Down) as the brass comes in eventually Robert Lloyd and Fliss start to go back and forth vocally interweaving with the handclaps and brass, this ends up sounding like 60's girl group gone weird punk and is totally intoxicating.
I (Heart) CCTV is as ironic as you'd expect as Robert lists all the things accidentally caught on CCTV that probably shouldn't have been. This is classic obtuse Nightingales with burnished vocals, jerky guitars with Robert's vocals highlighting various absurdities of modern life.
Frances Sokolov is a song in tribute to the wondrous talents of Vi Subversa lead singer of The Poison Girls who was an amazing presence live, unafraid to be different or to stick out in a crowd as she told us to Take The Toys From The Boys, this is a song of admiration and thanks for everyone she inspired. The Poison Girls should be far more lauded than they are. I hope this song gets a few more people to go and discover what an incredible woman and style guru she was. This tune also sounds amazing.
Spread Yourself Out opens like a classic Nightingales tune being played acoustically, it builds a bit but is a low slung as the acapella part makes clear you need to take all the words in as you try to figure out just how many points are being expressed and figure out how to work on all of them.
The main single from the album Bloody Breath follows into the world of modern paranoia amid the brass led off kilter blues wailing music trying to lift us out of the miasma and back to that simple piano and bass motif to talk about yet another dirty rumor and round and round we go slow thoughtfully so.
Mind Of Stone will talk deeply into you ears as you grasp the dichotomies on the last few years, dense myriad ways grabbing a hold of their hearts, the cancerous tongued beasts attack our ears.
I Needed Money At The Time feels like an anthem for our tortured times, when anything can be bought with enough money, from the current world cup, bought and paid for to advertise a cruel regime.
The despots are in charge, as I write this between games, feeling guilty for using my convalescence time to watch this spectacle of evil and football corrupting our soul's, needing lots of great searing sounds like this to ameliorate the pain or guilt.
The Very Nature of life unfolds in this tale of the rat race, normal life over the guitars and military timekeeping drumming from Fliss we all want to draw the curtains and never look out again.
Magical Left Foot a perfect football song they even go to Bahrain and get in the right neck of the woods as The Saudis find their own magic on the pitch, no this isn't totally about footy but the lyrics about unforced errors could be, although the purple thread Robert sings about isn't a football shirt, how many players will tell us it's not their fault this month. Love this song.
Mark Meets No Mark is a growled noir tale with a typical Nightingales backing. The album closes with My Sweet Friend a speedy stripped back Rockabilly pop song that harks back to Better To Have, a nice way to end the album.
Find Out more at https://uknightingales.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-laugh https://www.facebook.com/thenightingalesuk
