U.K. group
the Nightingales would make challenging music from the time of their 1979 formation through several different phases, but even at the time of their 1982 debut full-length,
Pigs on Purpose, they were stuck between worlds. Formed from the ashes of
the Prefects (who supported
the Clash on their 1977 tour),
Nightingales were peers of abrasive post-punk acts like
the Fall,
Alternative TV, and
Swell Maps, yet had an experimental streak informed by the blissed-out randomness of
Faust's and
Captain Beefheart's backwoods surrealistic blues. Led by sardonic singer/lyricist
Robert Lloyd,
the Nightingales' debut rumbled through raw, wiry riffs, experiments in rock deconstruction, and noisy songs that seemed intent on unraveling around
Lloyd's sometimes sociopolitical, sometimes comically absurdist lyrics. The album's fidelity is at times hissy and alien, with tracks like the bumbling groove of "Use Your Loaf" compressing brittle acoustic guitars, dubby bass, and
Lloyd's sullen mutters into an anxious little space that feels overcrowded with both sounds and ideas. While tracks like "Blood for Dirt" and "Blisters" come on like the sort of repetitive fare
the Fall and
Wire were making around the same time,
the Nightingales only hide their inherent weirdness for so long. Songs like "One Mistake" are energetic but wobble loosely, threatening to fall apart at the seams, and
Lloyd breaks into a bizarre a cappella rant on "Well Done Underdog." Intertwining of disparate musical ideas was pretty commonplace for iconoclastic post-punk bands, but there's something especially off-kilter when
the Nightingales miswire loungy jazz and rockabilly on "Joking Apart" or distill jagged punk guitars and tribal drumming into hypnotic Krautrock on "Yeah, It's OK." A little too left of center even for the boundary-pushing climate of early-'80s post-punk,
Pigs on Purpose is an interesting sidebar to the more acclaimed albums to come from its era. It's a wilder, sharper, and more abstract expansion of ideas explored by
Wire,
Public Image Ltd.,
Gang of Four, and the like, and for anyone searching for something beyond the best-loved examples of post-punk, it's completely essential. ~ Fred Thomas