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Live Review
by SashaS
11-4-2003
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| James Skelly/The Coral: cosmic riders |
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Live: The Coral
Astoria, London
Thursday, April 10, 2003
The Coral reach for a day after forever
The Coral’s gig tonight is a rescheduled NME Awards Show from 11 February, due to guitarist Lee Southall’s hand injury. And it has benefited us, the public, because the band’s completed their second album in meantime and tonight’s the opportunity to check where’s the band heading. In particular after recording the album in da La-la-land.
The good news is that they’ve not gone West Coast – y’know, you can take boys out of Merseyside but you can’t take the Scouseness out of the boys – and it confirms, expends and incorporates new elements in the already large sonic blueprint. The first encounter with the new songs from 21 July due ‘Matrix Farm’ disc, appears that they’ve got more of a psychedelic tone to it, there are more experimental sounds, without truly losing its grip and handle of its MerseyBeat roots.
In a few instances there is a new fury unleashed, the songs simply explode with such aggro you wonder where was it on the self-titled Mercury Award nominated debut album? One of the tracks, it could be entitled ‘Getting High’, is suchlike aural attack, like American tanks are rolling into town to liberate us of every other way but their own. The song title may be only a working one but precious little information flows from the stage; James Skelley, the band’s singer, is not renown for his onstage banter and rare introduction of songs is more mumbled than announced.
The new single, ‘Don’t Think You’re The First’ makes an appearance but it is another cut, that should be called ‘Dripping Lucky Blues’, a jangly, mid-paced tune, ‘disturbed’ by a subtle funkiness that grabs attention with a force of a medieval vice; there are so many details in this brilliant concoction from fusion to Slavic sounds, from Pink Floyd to some early Genesis (with Peter Gabriel), folk, jazz... The show ends with a monster jam that grows out of ‘Goodbye’, visits the outer solar rim, travels through the space dust and asteroid belt before returning to the ‘launch pad’. It did cure me of all neurosis, in one swift, 15-minute, ride!
Whatever genre this band is squeezed into is simply false because they make music to the pop-band standards of the 1960s; they recreate the spirit of an era when a band could make diverse albums with only a couple of hit tunes to draw public’s attention and not the one-dimensional/one-style/one-song-variations of zeitgeist. The Coral, although so young it is hard to believe they can handle such a huge musical vocabulary, do it with a mixture of buoyancy and nonchalance many other bands can only envy.
On a bare stage with stagelights as the only visual aid, this band – all dressed-down to their usual street attire – can replace Oasis as the ‘people’s choice’, one feels. It’s enough to witness the mass reception of their faves, ‘Shadows Fall’, ‘Dreaming Of You’, ‘Simon Diamond’… to realise this band is capable of drinkers’ songs for the drugged up generation.
The Coral have an incredible talent to create ‘insta-classic’ pop-rock, seasoned with effect-icings, dissonant passages, sudden and somewhat awkward breaks… Eclectic, surreal, schizo-phonic… That’s why you gotta dig them this much!
Live dates:
11 April – Pyramids Centre, Portsmouth
12 April – University, Cardiff
21 June – A Midsummer Night’s Dream!, Big Top, New Brighton, Merseyside
SashaS
11-4-2003
The Coral’s single ‘Don’t Think You’re The First’ is available now on Deltasonic/Sony
The Coral album ‘Matrix Farm’ is due on 21 July 2003 via Deltasonic/Sony
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