A Nightingale sings again in Shropshire

Shropshire band The nightingales are on the verge of a breakthrough - after 30 years.

"You know what I look like?" asks Robert Lloyd over the phone ahead of our scheduled chat, appropriately in his local boozer in Ketley, Telford. "Tall, fat bloke with glasses."

Turns out Robert, the lyricist and singer with cult group The Nightingales, is a bit of a joker. He's not fat but he today he is on top form.

In a downbeat, underdog kind of way. Or at least in an underdog kind of way when the underdog is finally blinking and believing at the prospect of victory in the shape of wide(er) spread recognition.

This year marks 30 years since his group released its debut single and the group has existed, on and off, outside the mainstream ever since.

But maybe, after three decades struggling as a cult curio, The Nightingales could be about to experience a reversal of fortunes.

Robert shakes his head as he reveals that the comedian Stewart Lee, a huge fan of the band, has invited them to headline a night at London arts festival he is curating. An album of Nightingales cover versions featuring Lee, Phill Jupitus and a legion of star-heeled fans is set to be released this month. And Mojo magazine has featured the group on one of its latest compilation CDs.

"Mojo using one of our songs, Stewart Lee putting us on at the Queen's Hall and all these artists doing cover versions. . . maybe it's some sort of turning point.

"But in all honesty, I'm so 'cynical' that I don't see it as some big adventure round the corner."

By this point, it should be said, Robert is laughing, and to someone who's only just met the bloke there would seem not to be a cynical bone is his body.

"I don't want to come across as a misery because I'm not, but I feel completely neglected, totally underrated. It hurts because I know how good we are."

A new tour, including a date at The Slade Rooms in Wolverhampton this Friday, coincides with the publication of a new book of Robert's lyrics, This Happened, Then This. An unofficial version, compiled by a fan, is entitled Well Done, Underdog and is also out.

One thing is certain - The Nightingales music has stood the test of time, and in today's climate of disposable pop - instant hit or sudden death - the old ones are evidently the best.

Peruse the listings of any self respecting music magazine and you will see the artists that are dominating the tour schedules are those that have been around the block, have reformed for reunion tours.

In the intervening decades he has remained true to his muse, squirrelling away at his writing and music, just being Robert and refusing to be anything else.

When I catch up with him, he's sipping a pint of Guinness and scribbling down a few words in the tiny jotter pad he carries with him wherever he goes.

"It's just ordinary stuff that captures my imagination," he says. "I was watching Midlands Today with Nick Owen and, in relation to one story, he said the line 'de-stigmatising free school dinners' and I was away. I had free school dinners as a kid and I never felt stigmatised."

Despite several attempts to get him onto the subject of disposable pop (I wanted to ask him what he thinks of the X Factor) I fail miserably.

"I do what I do," he says, "and always have done. I hope it has a solid integrity about it, but I cannot be any other way."

With an ever fluctuating line up, based around Robert, the band recorded a bunch of critically acclaimed singles and three albums, plus many radio sessions for John Peel. They also regularly toured the UK and Northern Europe, as headliners and supporting acts as diverse as Bo Diddley and Nico, before splitting up in the late '80s.

The Nightingales reformed infrequently before kicking off again in earnest in spring 2004, with Lloyd being joined by Alan Apperley, an original member of the punk group The Prefects, of which Robert was a member.

The Prefects were part of The Clash's legendary White Riot Tour, recorded a couple of Peel sessions, released a 45 on Rough Trade and, years after splitting up, had a retrospective CD released by NY label Acute Records to all round glowing reviews - from Rolling Stone to webzines.

Since reforming The Nightingales the group have been more productive than ever - releasing five 7-inch vinyl singles and three albums, touring the UK, mainland Europe and USA several times and recording numerous radio sessions in England and America.

John Peel, the former Shrewsbury School boy turned DJ who gave the group their big break, said of The Nightingales: "Their performances will serve to confirm their excellence when we are far enough distanced from the 1980s to look at the period rationally and other, infinitely better known, bands stand revealed as charlatans."

"John Peel, God rest his soul . . . I had never been in a studio before, that was a big thing for us. It was the start, really."

In 2008 the band recorded Insult to Injury, an album with Hans Joachim Irmler of krautrock legends Faust. This record was released in February 2009 on the Klangbad label and is largely considered the best 'gales album yet.

Another Irmler produced album - The Lost Plot - was recorded in August 2010 but has no planned release date. A new album is due to be recorded and released in 2011.

Rewind 30 odd years to when Robert launched himself into the music scene with the post punk outfit The Prefects. He might have been ever so slightly slighter and not worn glasses, but Robert has always been unmistakably Robert - an unlikely anti-hero, in it for the art and passion of making music, writing songs that give a voice to underdogs everywhere and hope to those who did not conform to the stereotypical image of a rock star.

Time, it would seem, is beginning to tell.

By Ben Bentley

• Tickets for the Wolves Civic show are priced £7.50 and are available from Midland Box Office on 0870 320 7000 or online at www.wolvescivic.co.uk

• For more information visit www.thenightingales.org.uk