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A casual pre-concert chinwag with Robert Lloyd while lounging at the Nightingales’ merch table (FYI, assorted giveaways include “Bullet for Gove” t-shirts, copies of Only My Opinion, Volume I of the collected lyrics from Lloyd, a bright orange clutch bag and a designer eyeglass case!) made an intriguing start to a rare evening in the company of Britain’s (yet) most underrated band. A chatty Lloyd confirmed that the next set would be made up mostly of newer material, including half a dozen unrecorded tracks (I confess my heart almost sank to the bottom of the Taff at this point, as I was hoping against hope for a big hit). tour of the band’s back catalogue). In truth, that will probably never happen and Lloyd was quick to explain why he didn’t want to end up fronting his own Nightingales tribute band, citing how he once turned down comedian Stewart Lee’s offer of a high-profile festival. slot that was conditional on the band playing their debut album Pig’s on Purpose (1982) in its entirety. Lloyd was as good as his word, with “Parafin Brain” (the combo’s debut single for Cherry Red which reached No. 39 on the Independent Chart in April 1982), the only classic dusted off for tonight’s show. And really, given that his latest album Mind over Matter (2015) reveals an inspiring Lloyd who is still in mortal combat with his muse, who can question his way of thinking?

For the uninitiated (aka the youngsters), Robert Lloyd is the real deal. As a member of The Prefects, Birmingham’s first punk band, the 17-year-old frontman somehow found himself supporting The Clash on their legendary White Riot Tour (paid, four cans of beer!) and later jamming alongside the seminal punk bands Buzzcocks, The Damned and The Slits throughout 1977/78, delivering a raw set that included their seven-second opus “VD”. The Prefects broke up before releasing a record, although Rough Trade scored a posthumous independent hit with the band’s Peel Session song “Going through the Motions” in 1980. Lloyd, Joe Motivator (guitar), and Paul Apperley (drums) split up. they formed. The Nightingales, and the rest, like them, say it’s History.

Except, of course, that Robert Lloyd is a central character in an unofficial alternate history of popular music! Even when factoring in the group’s seven Peel Sessions and their unexpected longevity, the spotlight has hardly furrowed the brummie singer’s brow, let alone stayed there for the full fifteen minutes! Lloyd, despite making a string of wonderfully abrasive post-punk albums and penning a plethora of incendiary pop tunes over a 40-year period, remains completely invisible to the general population. This is despite the fact that you could make an excellent case for Robert Lloyd being the best British lyricist of his generation. If you were to imagine a spectrum of pop wordsmiths stretching from Lennon and McCartney to Alex Turner and Ben Drew, incorporating the likes of Ray Davies, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Billy Bragg, Mark E. Smith, Morrissey and PJ Harvey, then you’d have all the bases covered. However, none, in my opinion, is equal to Lloyd.

Discussing Lloyd’s merits as a lyricist in the context of a live performance of ‘Wales, where the language is often turned into gibberish glam by a barrage of Mickey Spillane riffs, may be a case of diving headlong into the rabbit hole, but it’s a journey worth taking. Lloyd, though able to write clever one-liners like this gem from “Bachelor Land”

‘Even martial arts masters must have some washing to do’,

or my favorite pop punchline of all time, from the giddy noir of “Insurance”,

‘Most of the words are in the dictionary, it’s just taking them off the shelf’,

is, more often than not, as surreal and impenetrable a lyricist as you’ll find anywhere in the art form, like the lyrics to “The Bending End” (which, along with “Bachelor Land” and “Insurance,” may be found on the band’s best album, Hysterics) makes it (un)clear.

“Reminds me of the weatherman on TV, a familiar face with a forgettable name / Had access to film and a camera, said he had a wicked nature / Said it in the stars the day he read them / This could be why the one who had no inclination to use the medium he had access to, maybe it’s his lack of imagination / Who’s to say, who cares anyway? / Whatever the reason he never cares about the choice , doesn’t even consider it / Tomorrow could be colder or warmer, what’s the use of making things more complicated?

The undulating chorus of the song,

“May the day come when all the people agree to put Paul Daniels to work / Believing in the wizard is futility / Remarkable powers are out of place in democracy,”

it’s a corker but somehow you can’t imagine it was played at the family entertainer’s funeral.

When the band re-formed in 2004, after a 15-year hiatus, which Lloyd spent mostly working as a postman, the “comeback” album “Out of True” (2006) saw the band pick up exactly where they left off, with a bellicose Lloyd proving he still had the stomach for the fight on tracks like “Born Again in Birmingham,” “Let’s Talk about Living” (BBC 6’s single of the week) and the gargantuan slab of glam rock that is “Take Away.” the Stigma of Free School Dinners”, each of which is as good as anything they made on vinyl in their heyday. “Out of True” also proved that Lloyd hadn’t lost his eye for character assassination, as the devastating ballad “Black Country” highlights.

‘I’d borrow cash and weed from his friends / And scratch his rash and someday be a user / Empathetic liars on the boozer, love a loser / But such an expensive friendship is and they thank Christ he drank himself to death / It was a boil on the ass of the Black Country’.

“Out of True” was the start of a prolific period for Lloyd, with four more studio albums and a couple of live albums flowing from his poison pen in the last decade, all to widespread critical acclaim and, as of custom, a general commercial disdain. Every one of those releases over the past few days bespoke the fact that the old pun was still shooting from the lip, a fact confirmed yet again by tonight’s scintillating set.

Taking the stage, bassist Andreas Schmidt cheerfully introduces the band and that’s where all communication ceases, until exactly one hour later when Lloyd, in response to enthusiastic applause from the seventy spectators present, clarifies his standard position in the encores. “Thanks for coming, but no matter how much you clap or shout we don’t do it yet. There are other groups that do, but we don’t.” Then, suddenly, he’s gone. I last saw him, upstairs in the collapsed Moon Club on the sofa in the corner, arms outstretched, head tilted back in exhaustion.

However, there was still a lot to like about Nightingales at Night. Lloyd seemed in good spirits, which isn’t always the case (a 2011 Festival performance sticks in the memory not only for its impressive set, but for Lloyd’s constant berating and taunting of his audience), while in the Buffalo Bar a few years ago a manic Lloyd was loitering in the crowd brandishing a microphone and suddenly found myself recruited into an army of backing vocalists in a swashbuckling rendition of “How to Age.”

Lloyd was content to simply walk around the stage tonight, coming on as a Rocky XVIII punch-drunk heavyweight with too many bouts under his well-filled belt, occasionally throwing a flurry of graceful punches at an imaginary opponent, before breaking up a series of movements. last practiced by King Kong atop the Empire State Building, as he pushed aside a squadron of fighter jets. It’s glorious material, reminiscent of the half-crouching can-can Lloyd performed when I first saw the band at the Poly in Wales thirty years ago.

Lloyd has been quick to praise the stellar quality of the band’s current lineup (while the biography entry on the Nightingales’ Facebook page is, by contrast, unforgiving of some of their predecessors describing them as spellbinding and mercenaries’) and more than live up to their big billing tonight. “Dumb and Drummer,” a modern bathtub thump by Nightingales, and one of several songs to showcase a howling duet with ex-Violet Violet drummer Fliss Kitson, is an early standout, closely followed by jackhammer versions of ” Thick and Thin” and “Bullet to Gove”. Nameless and unknown songs (a request for a track listing, so far, has gone unanswered) pour out, giving way to a vitriolic cacophony of rockabilly, post-punk and glam (the band even bursts into “Blockbuster” midway through). on the way “Chocolate Comes Home”). A giddy “Booze, Broads and Beauty” suddenly calms down, leaving Lloyd to “recite” a piece of stage poetry “Learn to Say Maybe”, sadly, however, omitting his best lines,

“Then he got a job at Eurosport covering dominoes, falconry and kendo / Then he became popular and won awards for innuendo and innuendo.”

The concert comes to a gale-force finale with a gut-wrenching rendition of Mind over Matter’s “Bit of Rough” before the band honorably bows out. Lloyd will be doing more heavy lifting in Leicester, Manchester, Bradford and Edinburgh before the month is out. Do not miss it!

I suddenly realize I haven’t mentioned Lloyd’s brief stint masquerading as Robert Lloyd and the New Four Seasons in 1987/8, where our hero got a modern haircut, signed to a major label and wrote a couple of absolute soul classics. , the best of which, the irrepressibly catchy “Something Nice,” may be the best pop song ever written that you’ve never heard of. Then again, can that honor belong to his companion piece “Anchor Part”? You really should stop reading this now (I’m running out of things to say anyway) and check out the songs for yourself (making sure to watch Lloyd’s Snub TV performance below to catch a glimpse of that signature dance) and decide for yourself. yourself.

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