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Album Review
by SashaS
24-7-2002
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| The Coral aim at the top of the world! |
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The Coral: 'The Coral'
(Deltasonic)
The Coral floor the critic with youthful diversity
Life feels good when you start a morn with something like The Coral’s album because it turns the usually misery-infested critical workadays into a joyous grind. To paraphrase a car commercial, ‘It’s the feeling on the inside’. The Merseyside band’s self-titled maiden waxing, as it used to be termed in the olden days, is a gem, a disc full of pure precious nuggets of such beguiling idiosyncrasy. There is no dilemma here – ready salted or Marmite’n’chives? – one gets all the flavours, for all the Gary ‘Crisps’ in us. And this fresh, you’ve not had it since the first kiss.
The disarming thing here is not some blinding innovation but the insight, respect and spirit of the past they have so deftly adopted and handle. While a lot of bands flirt with plagiarism in their inspirational process that is no more than pillage of bygone tunes, these 20-year-olds have managed to plug into the soul, the heart and aura of eras they pay dues to quirkily. The wartime PM, Sir Winston Churchill, stipulated that the better one understood history the easier one’d anticipate the future. The Coral are the dope, pishing all over stroller-rockers like Gomez.
The space-outness of ‘Spanish Main’ sets the mood into overdrive and it doesn’t let go until the hidden track. There are moments that are pure Mersey Beat-ness circa 1964 – ‘Goodbye’, there is Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd of the early psychedelic days on ‘Simon Diamond’, here comes The Doors (Teardrop Explodes?) on ‘Wild Fire’, West Coast breezes through ‘Bad Man’ and then, there is Captain Beeheart-esque ‘Skeleton Key’, the best cut in the style of the old codger since he decided to paint.
The other tracks demonstrate an emerging force that is a complete rolling stone: ‘I Remember When’ starts as a well-behaved Scott Walker ballad but soon metamorphoses into an indie-guitar festi, ‘Dreaming Of You’ manages to marry Gerry & The Pacemakers* with The Specials, ‘Shadows Fall’ is a melange of reggae, ragtime and barbershop quartet… It’s not only about wearing influences on your sleeve bur how you wear it…
It is also a statement of intent – ‘the world is a wide place and we gonna explore every corner’. All these names and yet, this is The Coral album because their confidence and self-respect ride its own pace. Passion for sounds, commitment to variance, zest to best themselves are more than evident on The Coral agenda and genuinely irresistible.
The Coral sound like a free-spirited, content-to-be-different, happy bunch. Album of the year as I can’t imagine anyone bettering the method of this madness. And yet, the only reason the disc doesn’t get a ‘tenner’ is that would indicate – a masterpiece, perfection without room for improvement. And that’s far from being the case, there is a whole huge planet to bounce about!
9/10
Tour dates:
01 October - Newcastle University, Newcastle
03 October - Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds
05 October - Manchester University, Manchester
06 October - Sugarhouse, Lancaster
07 October - The Foundry-Sheffield University, Sheffield
09 October - The Junction, Cambridge
10 October - Shepherds Bush Empire, London
11 October - De Monfort Uni, Leicester
12 October - Bristol University, Bristol
14 October - Lemon Grove, Exeter
15 October - Concorde 2, Brighton
17 October - Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
18 October - Liverpool University, Liverpool
* - Only messing with your ignorance, it is The Beatles, of course.
SashaS
24-7-2002
The Coral’s album ‘The Coral’ is released 29 July 2002 on Deltasonic/Sony
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