Forty years young, The Nightingales are back with a storming album. Perish The Thought is a sharp and saturated beast wrapped in a lush baroque of a cover full of rich flora, that if you stare hard enough is a garden full of death, subtly strangled in barb wire. The Crass-like eye-popping photo-montage of the inlaytoo (is that Elvis floating above tenements?), groping towards the genius of the contents. In all honesty, I was expecting a jangling shimmer of indie, but was thrown a ballsy swagger that shines that extra mile, a vibe that soaks up loads of influences, but infinitely arrows from a league of its own.
“Wrong Headed Man” sets the bite, for the runaway Pere Ubus of “The World And His Wife” to take the reins with its taut rhythmics and syllabled cymbals. “Enemy Of Promise”continues the amusement in a psychobilly choppiness to a nagging narrative (of words that shun cliché). Definitely NOT troughing from the nostalgia nosebag, this is spiky and intense, dishing out an over-driven kiss that floods, bristles assertively with crazy gear changes that juggle the pyroclastic flow, keeping you attentively on your toes. Fliss Kitson‘s frenetic drums stapling a gorgeous counter to that growling delivery of Robert Lloyd, her vocals silking up the sensation as the lyrics glow in manic sing-along-ability and James Smith‘s guitars churn up the firmament.
Perish The Thought is an absolute pleasure that’s well worth your attention.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-