With sharp turns of phrase and pace, the legendary Birmingham post-punk band fronted by Robert Lloyd return with meatily rich riffs and rhythms, and a collection of wittily ironic songs on social injustice and current affairs like a musical news broadcast. As they describe it, it’s “a music hall interpretation of the day’s news, a haunting jolt into realism narrated with all the angst of an insistent, slightly dishevelled late-night newscaster.” With acidic mischief, the album cover art is the early Baroque Italian artist Tomasso Salini (1575-1625), and his depiction of the Aesop fable The Cat, The Monkey and the Chestnuts, in which the Monkey fools the Cat into taking roasting chestnuts from the fire, promising to share them, but the cat’s paws get burned, causing complete mayhem. It’s a gaslighting political fable for modern times. Lloyd is a strolling silverback of lyricism, occasionally unleashing that deep, Captain Beefheart growl, and the brilliantly enhancing band, are now the very best this purple patch of the Nightingales’ history with their supertight, inventive musicianship - Andreas Schmid on bass, Fliss Kitson on drums and backing vocals, and guitarist James Smith. Highlights include the pumping folk-piano-pop-rock opener The New Emperor’s Clothes, ironic social commentary number The Same Old Riff (with a reference to Bowie’s Queen Bitch), the frenetic The Men, Again, the smouldering Just Before, the thunderously sharp Joyce, the woozy noise of The Limpest Bark with Kitson on backing vocals, the menacing country twist of The Princess And The Piss Artist, and closing number The Morning After Mouth. One of the greatest of British under-the-radar independent bands continue their ongoing triumphant streak. Out on Fire Records.
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