The Coral stroll further up the mysticslope

The Coral’s productivity leads one to ponder whether they are only happy in the circle of their own world, escaping into creativity to be protected from the outdoor ugliness by the beauty of the ‘Thousand Acre Wood’? This is the band’s third release in 18 months and although an EP, this strictly limited edition that clocks in at over 28 minutes is not just a ‘stop-gap’ disc - to the album #3 proper, probably due by April - but a rough diamond.

These boys love their music and to hell with other two main ingredients of Rock’s equation: plotting and promotion… [It used to be - sex and drugs but times do change and it’s probably wiser to reserve judgement on the latter.] These eleven tracks are one-takes done in an afternoon… Only kidding - a week. Some are fully developed songs, some are sketchier, few are simply just sonic notes, such as 0:39 length of ‘Why Does The Sun Come Up’ - its title longer than the song!?

‘Nightfreak’ is alongside the lines of stream-of-conscienceness - from the plaintive opener, ‘Precious Eyes’, with the signature dynamics that traverse from Merseyside to the psyche-California; ‘Venom Cable’ keeps it simple with a catchy-hook that evokes Talking Heads’ funky-minimalism and is bound to burn l-i-v-e! ‘I Forgot My Name’ is by-now a typical Coral song, a mix of Mersey beats’ psychedelia and a dollop of Captain Beefheart… Or the furious trip that is ‘Migraine’ - lovin’ it!

Then, ‘Sorrow Or The Song’, as well as ‘Aunties Operation’ with its ascending ‘jam’, can also be classed as familiar because the band’s covered a vast ground over the few short years… And, the Skelley brothers and their cohorts do their music with abandon where anything is possible-doable-goes and that’s why we love them! A tad patchy [‘Grey Harpoon’, what happened, or didn’t, there?], not so much prophecy but no doodling here, it’s a potent indication of what we can expect on the next full-length LP.

The Coral operate in an atmosphere where full-sizes of pop-Army of Barbie’n’Kens litter our senses and thus an album like this tends to sound like the Velvet Underground in their day: raw, spontaneous, noisy, anti-trends and genus… When the band turned on its amps a couple of years ago, they were rather unique but now plenty of new names have emerged attempting to re-seed the field and yet coming up short on the crop.

And, some others - in our eternal search for demi-Gods of to-day - have emerged as the favourites, such as Franz Ferdinand, the new stand-up comedians of pop, as far as the Brit-chart are concerned. And, as significant as The Darkness last year - hypesville on the 3rd rock from the solar spots! While The Coral, like Winnie-The-Pooh, is just IS.

WMcD (Weapons of Mass cultural Destruction) are media - Heat, Nuts, Zoo, Radio 1 - leading into the new age of literacy darkness… The Coral are the truly experimental pop band that provide a velvet lift. They, citizen, have the key to screwing nostalgia into futurism and, blimey Hank, are just like narghileh stuffed with the Am’dam’s flora.

8/10