Punk and post-punk veterans the Nightingales have announced a new run of UK tour dates for 2025. Tickets for the shows go on sale at 10am on Friday 1 November. Scroll to the bottom of this article for a detailed list of the band’s UK performances. 

Formed in 1979, the band’s fortunes have been on the upswing since King Rocker, a documentary about the misadventures of their frontman Robert Lloyd and his contribution to the UK’s punk scene. They most recently released the live album Live in Balsall Heath in 2023, which was recorded in their hometown of Birmingham.

Starting at Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club on Wednesday 21 May, the band will then hit venues in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, Cambridge and London. 

We last reviewed the band when they played Sneaky Pete's in 2011, writing, 'The Nightingales are what happens to 1970s-sired latch-key kids if you leave them alone with a CD of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, a DVD of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club and the Bumper Book of Existentialism For Boys. After more than thirty years in the saddle, with only occasional sojourns into solo careers and Svengali-ing long-lost girl band We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It for distraction, the one-time John Peel stalwarts live experience is an intense and relentless chug of skewed meat n' two veg avant-garage-punk laced with vocalist and wordsmith Robert Lloyd's very English absurdist world-view of how (post) modern life is rubbish. Think Pere Ubu if they'd grown up in the shadows of Birmingham's Bull Ring rather than the Flats in Cleveland.' Read the full review here. 

Nightingales’ 2025 UK tour dates: 

Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, Wednesday 21 May
Think Tank, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Thursday 22 May 
Stereo, Glasgow, Friday 23 May
The Deaf Institute, Manchester, Saturday 24 May
The Castle & Falcon, Birmingham, Sunday 25 May
The Exchange, Bristol, Tuesday 27 May
Chalk, Brighton, Wednesday 28 May
Junction2, Cambridge, Thursday 29 May
Oslo Hackney, London, Friday 30 May 

Tickets for the Nightingales’ 2025 UK tour go on sale at 10am on Friday 1 November