Looks like Signor Manzini has been busy during lockdown Nightingales is a musical tour de force. This melodic tapestry is an organic homage to North Eastern roots woven of nautical warp and industrial weft. Like a timeshift series of expeditions from a literal and archetypical home harbour, it flits effortlessly & unpredictably in a way that the Black Siren sea shanty that lilts into Caribbean pop and back, can’t possibly typify.

The album sets sail charting rocky relationships on new courses without cargo in Remember Remember, and it comes home high via a joyous Smoggie Ezra-esque fatherly musing on the future history of the life force nestling in their Little Bump. The journeys in between veer from introspective angst to railing... to centred calm. Like the ancient and modern electric guitar deep-dive lament of One Lion and the whole lotta Getting Low; and the therapeutic acceptance that the river can’t be pushed and the Rain can’t be stopped. At the same time Maz is unashamedly upbeat, seeking Seeds of Hope and pushing on with the shapeshifting title track Nightingales, partly penned by Wycombe dynamo Harry Quinn.

Maz is also delightfully irreverent throughout, kicking Gordon Ramsey in the preverbal avocado euphemisms, and rocking the Teeside industrial Power in Steel mills like a Manic Eddie Van StonePhonics with only the faintest of leather-clad wry smiles.

This album defiantly evades classification, it’s freshup-trad, it’s fock-rolk (sic), it’s singer songwrote, orchestrated, slick, live, pop-RnB. Class collaborative musicianship produced with high precision studio witchcraft. Revealing layers of liminal nuance to those willing to jump on for the ride. It’s a musical treasure-chest crafted with humility and emergent vision. She’s a beaut.