Coral - The Backroom of Dreams

The twists of fate are sometimes truly bizarre. More contorted and absurd than a screenplay you'd call implausible, as capricious as only the most sublime irony can be, yet capable of opening up a perspective onto dizzying, happy developments. Take the story of Coral: now that success has kissed them (and abandoned them) long ago, it might seem incredible, but we might never have known them at all had it not been for a poster. One of those homemade, self-printed posters typical of fledgling high-school bands. That's essentially all the six English lads are, when they get together to make a racket in the basement of a pub in their native Hoylake, a seaside town in Merseyside, towards the end of the Nineties. Bill Ryder-Jones and Lee Southall on guitars, Nick Power on keyboards, Paul Duffy on bass, Ian Skelly behind the drums and his brother James as singer. First under the name Hive, later changed to The Coral, working hard to improve but apparently destined to remain a secret known only to a handful of their English peers. Were it not, that is, for that curious flyer advertising one of their gigs – an old man's exploding head at its centre – which catches the eye of Alan Wills, former drummer of Shack, who decides to go and see them. It's love at first sight.

Fired up by the enthusiasm these kids reignite in him, the former musician impulsively decides to start his own label and sign them as his very first act, improvising himself as their manager for lack of any alternative. Thus Deltasonic is born, which within a few years will launch, with varying fortune, other Hoylake acts like Little Flames and Rascals, as well as the Zutons (from nearby Liverpool): the first release on the small label's catalogue can only be Coral's debut single, "Shadows Fall", issued in a limited run in July 2001, recorded by Mike Hunter, the trusted producer of Mansun and Inspiral Carpets.

Gallons and gallons of coral

Hailed by critics as a prime driving force of the "guitar group revival" in England, the band loses no time, releasing within five months their first (and, to date, only) two EPs, "The Oldest Path" and "Skeleton Key", both produced (under the old moniker Kingbird) by Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie. The debut may not be dazzling, but there's no doubt that the good vibes point to at least an intriguing promise. Credit goes above all to the ballad "God Knows", a sort of restless, decadent sunshine pop, to the condensed despair of "Sheriff John Brown", or to the crooked, lo-fi psychedelia of "Flys". As confirmed by the narcotic "Darkness", the tone here is far more subdued than what the band will show in its very next step, the eponymous full-length debut The Coral (originally announced under the titles "Son Of Becker" and "Egg Zion"). The album hits shops at the end of July 2002, exactly one day before earning a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Prize (which will go to the forgettable "A Little Deeper" by Ms Dynamite).

Reverb, grime and the first of a long series of parched western plots: Coral introduce themselves with "Spanish Main", all roughness and warm tones, in a raucous, swirling picture. Just to contradict themselves and reinvent themselves as soft, languid seducers on the following "I Remember When". The chorus goes wonderfully over the top, and frontman James Skelly shows not the slightest fear, betraying a character that clashes with the barely twenty years on his birth certificate. Somewhere between Beatles and Stones, the band behind "Simon Diamond" tries to carve out the perfect intersection, with just the right psychedelic nuances streaking the tones and enough restraint to avoid the carnival-sideshow effect that overindulgence in such sounds often brings. One could file them under Love to simplify matters, but even that classification would be only partial. Either way, the aim is spot on, once again the fruit of the shrewd yet permissive production of a thoroughly wise Ian Broudie, and the six Englishmen always seem to know exactly where they're headed, especially when they offer up yet another jaw-dropping, multi-voiced refrain redolent of the Shadows ("Goodbye").

The direction chosen disavows both the belated demands of britpop, by then on its uppers in the UK, and the far more monochrome sound of the new recruits forcibly enlisted into a phoney scene – the so-called New Acoustic Movement of I Am Kloot, Turin Brakes, Starsailor and Kings Of Convenience – not to mention the slick Seventies revival brought along by the dazzling new sensations of North American indie-rock (Strokes and Interpol chief among them). What fairly clearly takes shape within these bizarre easy-listening sweets is a genuine anomaly which, as the six Merseyside lads seem determined to prove from the outset, will be no mere one-off episode but the fruit – one still to be cultivated at length – of passion, eclecticism and skill. Looks, haircuts and the chosen image accompany the music ("Wildfire") in steering toward another comparison, making Coral a sort of sun-scorched, feral version of the Byrds, the champions of a subgenre that doesn't exist yet but that will soon translate, with no formal inauguration and in entirely spontaneous fashion, into a kind of school – informally understood and never officially acknowledged.

With harmonica and jangling guitar, the first single "Shadows Fall" is another curious passage, winking at the Specials without falling into the slightly grotesque caricature-effect of so many Bob Marley impersonations of the moment. Coral are undeniably eccentric, but with an all-in-all personal style and an enviable sense of balance. The one truly irrepressible tune, though, is "Dreaming Of You" (which a fibbing Pete Doherty would later falsely claim to have written and sold to them), as simple as it is infectious, somewhere between a beat-era echo and the dream of a new British invasion. Skelly leads his bandmates with confidence and personality, but it's the freshness of the whole that truly wins you over, along with that flavour of a classic left forgotten for forty years in the treasure chest.

Even when they slow the pace down and dust off the Hammond ("Waiting For The Heartaches"), they remain convincing, revealing a command of five decades' worth of pop music's ABCs that is simply admirable, especially for their refusal to come across as smug little schoolmasters (unlike so many other young peers). "Skeleton Key", on the other hand, finds them running wild in expressionist fashion, an endearingly obsessive, tart episode that amounts to their punkish, murky, off-kilter rereading of the Doors. They sound enjoyable precisely because they're sinister and a touch unhinged, like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci at their most oblique.

The album thus takes shape as a collection of gems, three-minute vignettes that marry sunshine-pop radiance with rock's ripples in a harmony that borders on the miraculous. They entertain by enchanting or enchant by entertaining, depending on the spirit with which you lend them your ear. What really hits the mark is the vivacity of their technicolour kaleidoscope, a retro circus carousel devoted equally to pop surrealism and psych stylisations: a trademark alongside that twilight nostalgia and their irrepressible dark soul (the illuminating "Bad Man"), a bluesy vocation summoned to cross-pollinate plots and instincts of an entirely different nature. "Calendars And Clocks" is a closing track that indulges in doo-wop flourishes and a few instrumental oddities worthy of the Stranglers, rounded off by a coda, known as "Time Travel", in which to confine their freakiest, most experimental and boozy side (complete with an eloquent mantra, "Never Give Up The Fight").

The title of the long-awaited follow-up to The Coral comes straight from the lyrics of this hidden track - a record that may be less explosive in impact, but is if anything even more effective. In the frantic machine of the British "next big thing" industry, the Coral's debut had shone only with the fleeting light of the kind of "alternative" fifteen minutes of fame now handed out even to the most lackluster post-britpop acts. It's this second effort from the Hoylake band, Magic And Medicine, released just a year after their eponymous debut, that really shows how this very young outfit deserves a closer listen than the glut of "enfants prodiges" cluttering the pages of the music press. Where the sextet's debut had, in the long run, seemed limited by a certain urge to dazzle at all costs by mixing genres and styles, this new effort makes balance its true strength, without giving up the originality and eclecticism that define the band. The magnetic timbre of frontman James Skelly, with his theatrical, Jim Morrison-like energy, remains the unmistakable stylistic signature of the Coral's music on this sophomore record too, capable of turning the most classic blues into an exhilarating ride or making an otherwise soft ballad unexpectedly dense.

The fascination with sixties music permeates the album's atmosphere from the very first notes of "In The Forest", where the warm, full-bodied organ chords conjure up the Doors-like ghosts of a forest of disillusion in which the mind ends up dissolving. These ghosts are bound to resurface more than once across the record, hinting at a vaguely retro darkness, as in the nostalgic charm of "Secret Kiss", which nonetheless never truly falls into the trap of déjà-vu. From there we step into the Morricone-tinged world of the single "Don't Think You're The First", complete with flutes and a restless rhythm section, before being won over by the acoustic arpeggios of "Liezah", which seems to emerge straight out of a psychedelic Donovan dream, while "Talkin' Gypsy Market Blues" is the most thrilling apocryphal Dylan-esque blues heard in years, in perfect "Bringing It All Back Home" style. Between the esoteric shadow of the magician Crowley, the gypsy fantasies of a maid named Maria, and the jazzy colors that burst into "Eskimo Lament", Magic And Medicine keeps its intimate cohesion while never stopping to explore different registers.

Captivating and brazen at once, the Coral's melodies worm their way into the soul with the vitality of their many facets and the defenseless naivety of their lyrics, as if they came from some dimension outside of time, where Beck can comfortably sit alongside the Animals and Love.

No special effects or "cool" gimmicks, then, just a clean, crystalline sound in service of a songwriting vein as inspired as few others: perhaps not "a record even housewives can appreciate", as the band's keyboardist Nick Powers is keen to point out, but certainly the confirmation of a talent that will keep making people talk. The Merseyside band makes the most of yet another midsummer release (late July 2003), and the album debuts straight at number one on the UK charts: in this phase of frantic exposure, both live and on television, nothing seems to be off-limits for the sextet. It's no real surprise, then, that the sophomore effort also reaches the top ten in the United States, where its release is pushed back to the following February. Sweetening this reissue, distributed by Columbia, is a substantial companion EP, Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker, once again produced by Broudie.

A mini-album that can rightfully be considered a new record by the young English band. Six lads barely into their twenties, already on their third release, held in high regard by both audience and critics, could easily have been cowed by the fame they'd achieved, which all too often drowns promising young talents, crushing them in the machinery of showbiz. Instead, here they are releasing this little gem (put out in a limited edition, and thus a prime candidate for collectors' memorabilia), in which their somewhat brash, incredibly eclectic exuberance takes over. While Magic And Medicine boasted a greater artistic unity compared to the still-formidable debut (where the urge to dazzle at any cost could undermine coherence, creating a sense of dispersion) and showcased the band's ability to rein in their own energy, Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker recovers the cockiness of the debut, fusing it with the considerable artistic maturity they've since achieved; the eleven tracks that make up the record, with a total runtime of under 28 minutes, sweep the listener along on an adventurous journey driven by the most genuine expressive freedom, fresh and incredibly rich in sonic ideas drawn from the past.

The recording sessions, held somewhere in Wales, lasted just seven days, which makes the success of a record that's never flat, and is so carefully arranged and produced (clean, despite the clattering guitars, keyboard forays, and the odd hint of electronics), all the more remarkable. This is music from another era, one that would feel perfectly at home in the Sixties: one thinks of the Byrds (especially the "Younger Than Yesterday"-era Byrds), the Kinks, the Velvet Underground (present in certain psychedelic detours), the Love of "Forever Changes" (the same desert sand as Giant Sand), Wild West saloons full of drunken gunslingers and whores, and the most melodic Beatles ("Lovers Parade" could have come straight off "Rubber Soul"). That lo-fi taste that, at this particular moment, seems to be in vogue among quality pop musicians (think of Damon Albarn's "Democrazy") pervades the mood of this collection without stripping it of originality or substance - if anything, it wins over anyone who claims to be sick of the slick, artificial production dominating the charts.

The opening is entrusted to "Precious Eyes", with an unsettling guitar at the start and a sudden melodic shift, Skelly's voice ghostly and veiled behind a haze of fog. "Venom Cable", a propulsive Blur-style beat with seventies overtones, marks the first of the stylistic swerves that Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker will accustom us to. The haze returns to cloud the mind with "Song Of The Corn", vaguely Barrett-esque in its slow, hypnotic pace, backed by a primal bass-drum thump. The scorching sixties guitar of "Auntie's Operation" picks up the pace again, pushing it toward unexpectedly garage-rock, even punk, territory.

The reverberations of "Grey Harpoon", framed by sinuous, Eastern-tinged keyboards and a dance-like pace that numbs the senses like the movement of a flute player, give way once again to the wildest, most unbridled psychedelia of "Migraine", before closing out with the aforementioned "Lovers Parade".

Asked about the meaning of the title, the band replied that the Becker in question is the famous tennis player; ironic or not, that statement bears witness to the vitality and sheer joy of creation embodied by the brash, youthful lightheartedness of these talented lads - all the more commendable for it. Hoping they never lose that ironic levity, listeners can only enjoy its delightful effects. This holds especially true in the UK, where the collection, released independently, climbs to an unexpected fifth place on the sales charts. Not bad at all for a release originally conceived as a minor one, at best for completists.

A different kind of toy

Meanwhile, the band doesn't rest on its laurels, keeping up a relentless pace with live promotion and a one-album-a-year routine. 2005 brings The Invisible Invasion, the fourth chapter of a thoroughly commendable discography and the first album not to carry Broudie's name as producer. Recorded in Liverpool the previous winter alongside Portishead's Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, the record is a collection of songs that are, on average, longer, with more adult, less playful songwriting, though in England it still sells extremely well, debuting at a strong number three. Dusty vintage grain, driving rhythm, choruses like hypnotic mantras: the sextet persists in its exploration of a mythological past, and its psychedelia-streaked revivalism feels, today more than ever, like a joy for semioticians of pop music, scattered as it is with references to cultural ephemera and cinema.

The Coral are genuinely good at never indulging in cheap tricks, in tacky crowd-pleasing stunts, in insincere overreach. Instead they keep walking the understated yet always magnificently evocative path (the blazing finale of "Come Home") of their superb pop craftsmanship - revivalist, yet immune to formal adulteration. Intriguing and oblique, they entertain with crystalline class and their usual top-tier melodic flair. On "Cripples Crown", for instance, their exploration grows even more relaxed and elusive, so numerous (yet never definitive) are the references called into play. But there are also, always, the songs themselves - fun and unfailingly lethal.

As the title suggests, "A Warning To The Curious" is a fitting warning for the seasoned listener, with its ramshackle, reverb-streaked pop-rock and a James Skelly who grows ever more authoritative as a leader and master storyteller. "In The Morning", meanwhile, carves out the role of the big easy listening single, an unconditional surrender of a song, the kind that's never missing from their records: here they lean even more than usual into a sparkling sixties register, somewhere between sunshine pop and fairy-tale tones.

True to form, "Leaving Today" doubles down, giving no easy time to insatiable hook-hunters who demand them crafted to perfection. And when they choose to open up to folk ("Far From The Crowd"), the approach they take keeps the Coral free of any temporal cage, leaving them pleasantly suspended in an almost magical elsewhere, untainted by genre implications or by the rigid dictates of this or that school. Theirs is thus a Canterbury of the heart, more than a real one. Simple yet enchanting, they diversify their output to great effect, showing no aversion to even lighter numbers like "So Long Ago", capable of outdoing, by more than a few lengths, their celebrated countryman Badly Drawn Boy on his own home turf. "The Operator", by contrast, registers a few more electric ripples, the marks of a slightly deranged Farfisa organ, and an unlawful but thoroughly successful occupation of the swaggering, expressionist territory of Supergrass - kindred spirits, all things considered, to the Merseyside band (who, not coincidentally, never miss the chance to have them open for many of their shows). The irresistible "Something Inside Of Me", which incidentally lends its title to the new compilation, is cut from the same cloth.

After the dazed digressions of their previous effort, the six lads from Hoylake thus deliver a genuine display of maturity that plays across the full range of British pop fundamentals. Among all their albums, The Invisible Invasion stands not only as the promise of a new direction, but also as the exception that proves the rule of their unpredictability, since it sounds, perhaps, like their least American and most thoroughly English record - a gripping kaleidoscope of styles rediscovered right in their own backyard. With an instantly memorable refrain and a few well-placed electric surges, "Arabian Sand" works as a tribute to the early Kinks, broadening the picture further and indulging in a priceless pleasure that smacks of devotion, while the velvety farewell of "Late Afternoon" looks to the twilit, sublime idols of "Something Else". This double homage to the Davies brothers' band, which closes out this calm, delightful album, should be read exactly in that light: an excursion these adorable disciples - first in their class, yet also tireless rascals - take deep into their own truest musical roots, but also a worthy continuation of their own highly personal adventure.

Just a month after the album's release, Bill Ryder-Jones steps back from promotional duties, though without formally leaving his bandmates. He's replaced for the new tour by David McDonnell of Sand Band, and it's with McDonnell that James Skelly and co. record a handful of new songs with Geoff Barrow, soon shelved in order to put together a new record with their wavering original guitarist instead. The fruit of this labour is the fifth official album, Roots & Echoes, which hits shops in August 2007, once again cracking the British top ten (albeit in a more modest eighth place).

Breezy and brilliant even with fewer expressionist flourishes, the Coral open with the electric ballad "Who's Gonna Find Me", particularly driving and prone to singalong, nervy and full of drafts yet delivered with undeniable authority, while "Remember Me" finds them slowing down in search of a restraint, a sense of proportion, that has become truly formidable. Stylistically they don't deviate an inch from the sixties rock script they've profitably followed in previous chapters of their discography, somewhere between a nod to beat and a swirl of Farfisa organ. "Put The Sun Back" recalls early Zombies, though it favours acoustic guitars over piano and rejects any theatrical temptation. Their adherence to the canons of that songwriting and that sound remains exemplary regardless, going beyond slavish imitation, since the Coral put it to thoroughly personal use, careful not to deprive their songs of a relevance that is abstract and deliberately devoid of fixed coordinates, essential to sounding - paradoxically - more timeless than ever right now.

On "Fireflies", Skelly plays the old-school crooner, somewhere between Fred Neil and Harry Nilsson, and once again the conjuring trick comes off perfectly. In short, everything sounds convincing, every note is in the right place and the details are tended to with obsessive care right to the end: the elegant farewell of "Music At Night" takes care to dissolve the slight tension implicitly built up along the way, and flirts amiably with some of the most fluid and hybrid strains of homegrown alt-rock, Clientele above all. Despite this formal perfection, the passion isn't always quite what it was on the early records; the sacred fire no longer burns with the same intensity. Behind these superb exercises in style lurks a first, if not damning, shadow of mannerism. But the Coral are still very good at keeping it at bay, or at least concealing it, with the odd jolt of adrenaline, as on "In The Rain", which is tidy, yes, but decidedly more fiery and even angry. The truly admirable balance compensates for the limits of an album that too often seems to sacrifice heart for head.

"Not So Lonely" is a passage steeped in enchantment and an ideal of delicacy pushed almost to exhaustion, translated into something close to a pose, if an impeccable one. Once again the band proves skilled at sparing their creations from an icy sense of freeze-up (or empty necrophilia) that would be ruinous, yet their vitality still seems to suffer for it, and the originality quotient seems reduced to a flicker.

As the capable entertainers they are, they also deliver little gems built up from almost nothing - just a melodic nuance placed with good timing, a melancholic hint barely sketched in, and above all that old-fashioned grace, dispensed with their customary generosity ("Cobwebs").

The gallery of enchanting female figures in their catalogue grows with the elusive protagonist of "Rebecca You", with its lovely dark undertone of nostalgia, and the far more luminous one of "Jacqueline". "She's Got A Reason", on the other hand, looks to the band's more well-worn clichés, in a shadier, more restless variant (which even comes to echo, among others, the wonderful lost souls Blackeyed Susans), as if to affirm some promise of continuity. Eclecticism and virtuosity, if nothing else, remain the clearest proof of the enduring artistic magnificence of this English band.

Roots & Echoes is barely promoted live: a few dates in support of new stars Arctic Monkeys and appearances at Glastonbury and the BBC's Electric Proms Festival, joined on that occasion by friend Noel Gallagher. It's against this backdrop that the tensions with Ryder-Jones finally come to a head. The guitarist steps away in January of the following year, speaking of increasingly frequent panic attacks before shows and a substantial loss of interest in a project he had come to experience as a burden. He'll go on to a solo career, ranging from a modern-classical exploration inspired by Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" (the Morricone-esque "If...") to a fragile, understated collection of ballads à la Elliott Smith (the more than decent "A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart"), before landing more or less back at his starting point with the livelier, more conventional "West Kirby County Primary".

The band chooses not to replace him and carries on regardless. For the first time, they decide to look back at themselves, and in September 2008 release their own Singles Collection, a double compilation gathering the best of their output plus a CD tellingly titled "Mysteries & Rarities" (a assembly of demos, scattered outtakes and a handful of live versions), which however doesn't include the tasty flood of b-sides released over nearly a decade of their career.

A new album of original material, though, takes almost another two years to arrive, with the release of Butterfly House, produced by John Leckie, already known for producing the acclaimed debuts of Stone Roses and Kula Shaker (as well as Radiohead's "The Bends").

Mapping out the Coral's discography, you can trace how, starting from the daring psychedelic schizophrenia of their unforgettable debut (a bold bazaar crammed with eccentric freakbeat trinkets in abundance), the Hoylake band gradually went down the slope (a decline according to some, a steady-quality path according to others) of an ever more pronounced return to the orthodoxy of nostalgic revivalism, without the pyrotechnics and jolts of their early work. The only partial exceptions, come to think of it, are the cultivated, pataphysical back-room strangeness of the pocket-sized Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker and the flashes of imagination (unforgettable in some cases) on The Invisible Invasion. Like fellow townsmen Gomez - other sublime collectors of assorted sixties daguerreotypes, as well as first-rate calligraphic forgers - or even the Bees, fittingly based on the Isle of Wight (does anyone remember them?), the Coral have more or less knowingly decided to bury themselves alive in a crypt sealed off from time's merciless flow, so as to keep cultivating and perfecting, ad libitum, the lavish art of a musical philately whose near-obsessive, all-devouring collecting has an almost manic quality.

A thoroughly admirable intent, if only for the truly endless care and passion with which the quintet lines up, even on this new record, so many multicoloured psych-pop figurines and microscopic stamps beaded with compositional Byzantine flourishes to be savoured under a magnifying glass down to the smallest graphic detail, still catching (never hidden) nods to Love, Zombies, Donovan, Big Star, Monkees, Incredible String Band or Kinks (try tasting little treats like "Sandhills", "Grenn Is The Colour", "1000 Years" or "Two Faces" and then let us know). Garlands of flowery choruses and a certain messianic tone of physical and spiritual rebirth (one can't help thinking it's down to the hardships the band suffered following the painful departure of the talented Bill Ryder-Jones) make up the small (but credible) fortune of this sixth album, put together by the now ex-promising-newcomers alongside celebrated head chef Leckie, which genuinely risks becoming the most stylistically balanced and accomplished work by the band in over five years, even as it misses out, for the first time, on its usual date with the British top ten.

The Coral may be an unlikely press office for the tourist delights of a musical decade (the magnificent Sixties) only imagined by them and probably never truly existed quite like that (at least not as it has been diligently told to us by overzealous mythmakers), yet the frosted-glass kaleidoscope of songs offered by the band - and the more frugal one of the full acoustic rereading, "Butterfly House Acoustic", out in 2011 - is still worth the asking price, for anyone willing to earn it.

New Things, Old Things

In a February 2012 interview, bassist Paul Duffy announces that the quintet's new record, still untitled, is being finished off at Peter Gabriel's famous Real World Studios in Bristol. Word is of an album quite different from its predecessors, full of contrasts and with a meatier sound. Everything seems ready, in short, for the first step of what would, to all intents and purposes, appear to be a new incarnation of the band, when, just a few weeks later, the group announces it's putting its activities on hold, to make room for the various members' personal projects. The forthcoming record vanishes off the radar, shelved perhaps for good, and for several months no further word arrives. In the apparent quiet of this hiatus, good news comes in June of the following year: the curfew the English lads have long barricaded themselves behind is broken, at least implicitly. Credit goes to James Skelly, frontman and Byrdsian icon, who takes advantage of the extended break to put together a new outfit and record the first album under his own name. The billing is shared with the backing band the Intenders, who are in fact all the remaining Coral members except rhythm guitarist Lee Southall, bolstered by recruits from other small local outfits, Tramp Attack and Sundowners (including the third Skelly brother, Alfie, on guitar, and sister Fiona on backing vocals). The core quartet, made up of the two more famous Skellys plus bassist Paul Duffy and keyboardist Nick Power, had in fact already given encouraging signs back in late 2012, releasing (originally through fifth Skelly brother Neville's small label Watertown) a psych-pop album - Cut From A Star - credited to Ian Skelly & The Serpent Power, effectively the first solo outing (so to speak) by one of the Hoylake lads.

From its very intentions, this new project - the launch of a new "family" label, Skeleton Key - also aims to present itself as the fruit of a radical act of sharing among all its members: "I wanted something like Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band or Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers" - the ever-blond frontman has stated - "something that would hint (hence the name) that it wouldn't just be a straightforward solo record".

That this is an intensely collaborative work is made clear without much hesitation by the breezy opening of "You've Got It All", a well-structured, pleasant track blending sweetened blues flavours with nods to roots rock, shaped by James from the skeleton of a demo given to him by none other than Paul Weller, so that our man could turn it into a good song. The opening track works brilliantly as a blueprint: conviction is never lacking, the chemistry is beyond question, and the album as a whole feels lively and well played, even if it can't offer anything truly original. That limitation, however, is duly made up for by the genuine, unimpeachable enthusiasm of the performers, as well as by the strength of the collective.

Skelly nonetheless stands out through sheer star quality in several episodes, first and foremost the familiar R&B of "Do It Again" (complete with fast piano and a female soul backing chorus), delivered with the right amount of fervour, a clear reflection of the heavy influence of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, but even more so of Motown music, which the band were immersed in during the months when Love Undercover was coming together. Here and elsewhere the pace stays driving, the riffs stick to the dictates of the genre, and the mood is pleasantly carefree, like a side project stirring things up without the slightest external pressure, drawing on sounds the band had flaunted less in the past (indeed, missing is that mix of sixties psychedelia, Merseybeat and Morricone-esque western scores that made the Coral's fortune) but still very much beloved by its authors.

Avoiding excessive emphasis, James reveals his romantic soul, keeps things simple and hits the mark with the sheer directness of his approach. Here and there, harmonica and Hammond organ show his hand, betraying a leaning towards the calmer, more traditionalist registers of Americana (in the good sense of the word). There's also room ("Set You Free") for a borrowed version of the simple guitar line from the Cardigans' "My Favourite Game", turned into a rousing rock number in the style of the old Freewheelers or Marah, one that should go down well with fans of the Stones as much as with followers of Ryan Adams. Elsewhere ("I'm A Man") you can hear fairly clearly the echo of electric Dylan, with the same ease shown by other young artists who have followed in his footsteps in recent times, from Langhorne Slim (above all) to the Skygreen Leopards, from Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month to the Felice Brothers.

Among the other noteworthy moments, mention should also go to "Searching For The Sun", a sweeping ballad (dating back to the mother band's very earliest sessions) in which Skelly reveals his melancholy streak, backed by an impressive melodic gift, in the vein of Jayhawks-style alt-country: the result is a track with a killer refrain and a joyfully populist appeal, yet another successful example of easy listening deeply rooted in tradition.

Even when it slows down, Love Undercover proves to be a solid, endearingly old-fashioned piece of craftsmanship, one that rejects digital trickery in order to sound as authentic as possible in its sincere homage to an increasingly unfussy sonic world. This is music without masks, without extra dimensions or intellectual superstructures, but played from the heart and successful precisely because it is warm and honest. When the piano takes over, as on "Here For You", you might find yourself thinking of other first-rate Yankees like the Black Crowes (in their more relaxed, less fiery variant). James does a good job of digging for maximum depth with a voice that, while dependable, is anything but extraordinary compared to someone like Chris Robinson, while the charisma running through the strings of his Rickenbacker does the rest.

Also worth a mention is the closer ("Darkest Days"), more intimate and rapturous, in which the all-soul minstrel of the early Coral finally reappears. What stands out is the cleanness and restraint of a songwriting style that is, in the end, timeless: derivative, yet also impeccable in its stylistic pedigree, dated in terms of its stylistic horizons but made to feel current by the mature vitality of the performance. Every instrument on this album is exactly what's needed and exactly where it's needed, with no out-of-place intrusions, no exoticism, no psychedelic emptiness or noisy contamination. An unusual record for the Merseyside ensemble, but a good record all the same.

Meanwhile, the other members of the band had also started working on personal projects. Under the moniker Northern Sky, Lee Southall recorded an album, later shelved, with Molly Jones; together with Eva Petersen, Paul Duffy wrote the accompanying music for a short film and an animated feature, while Nick Powers collaborated with other local acts and published a book of poetry.

In August 2014, a surprise: the Coral announce their return with a new album. And within that surprise, another one: it isn't the album everyone was expecting from them. The indefinite hiatus in the band's activities, agreed by mutual consent to give each member room for their solo endeavours, had led the Merseyside quintet to keep delaying the release of their fateful seventh record, recorded in Bristol at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios and all but ready for almost three years. Well, The Curse Of Love, released by the band's own label that autumn, is not that album at all. Hardly anyone knew it, but the Coral had been sitting on a handful of songs ready for mastering for about nine years. It was Portishead's Geoff Barrow, the English band's producer at the time, who revealed it to the BBC, in a broadcast that turned into a fantastic teaser for the release of this genuinely mysterious object.

The Invisible Invasion, effectively this record's fraternal twin, had represented a potential rock turning point that was later disowned. Beyond the shared birthplace and the people involved, however, The Curse Of Love has very little in common with that collection. From the very start, in fact, the tone is subdued, shadowy; the band (who at the time numbered six, with the talented Bill Ryder-Jones not yet having packed his bags but on standby, and David McDonnell standing in as a temporary replacement) chose to play the card of intimacy, keeping the embellishments to a minimum and revealing a decidedly grown-up restraint. The clear singer-songwriter imprint, resistant to formal additives or tricks of quotation, brings them close, in terms of rigour and register, to artists of folk introspection like David Eugene Edwards, Ilya Monosov or Alasdair Roberts, setting aside, of course, the rough edges and sharp character of all three.

Stirring the waters just a little is "Wrapped In Blue", the first track from the batch to be released online: there's a brilliant fluidity to it, again recalling that of fellow countrymen the Clientele, though by the band's own standards the mood stays shadowy. There's a great delicacy to the touch, the performance deserves to be labelled "impressionistic", and frontman James Skelly comes across as more controlled and incisive than ever, truly skilled at avoiding affectation among the (few) operative choices made here.

Then again, these songs about everyday melancholy, never too sophisticated in terms of arrangement, are hardly the best the Coral have written in over fifteen years of honourable career, but they still offer moments of precious shine (and just the odd electric scratch that's not unwelcome). Subtle psychedelic colourings season things here and there without ever taking over, even in those couple of instrumental passages that heighten the arcane aftertaste of this long-forgotten collection. The enchanting "View From The Mirror" reignites the band's old obsession with the watery world, whose presence remains, as ever, "submerged", distant and restless. Faint Kinks-like echoes crop up a little further on, in the dustier, more floral "Gently", which nonetheless avoids indulging in cheap baroque flourishes. Occasionally the Coral play the part of decadents, opening themselves up to a twilight aesthetic, but without overloading the record with a theatricality that, perhaps, hasn't really been in their wheelhouse since the long-gone days of their eponymous debut.

Even when they try to edge back towards their own established clichés, when the colours warm up a little, the band betray troubled or sullen expressions ("The Golden Bough"), and there remains an air of restrained wonder, of contemplative harmony, which is about as unpandering as the repertoire gets ("Willow Song"). Only on "The Watcher In The Distance", which carries a seventies scent in the retrospective sense of Wolf People and the like, does the sound allow itself fuller, more muscular veins, delivered as ever with uncommon authority. Yet rather than a conventional, muscular psych revival orchestrated by a fully rounded band, the impression that continues to prevail is that of a solo work enriched by a sumptuous supporting ensemble: what may well tip the scales in that judgement is a performance from Skelly that is perhaps as compelling as he's ever been.

Conversely, the limitation of songs as evocative as these lies in the way they go around in circles without any real destination, tending to repeat the same formula over and over without bothering to hit the listener with the kind of knockout punch that top-tier easy listening inevitably demands. That's why, in how it unfolds, The Curse Of Love effectively confirms the same anomaly present in its genesis. It's a disenchanted album, clear-eyed but bloodless, stripped from the outset of the band's trademark pyrotechnic quips and joyful exuberance. Self-denying, one might say, and yet extremely sincere, in a way the Coral hadn't managed to write for a long time. Nine years, to be exact, at the very least.

The appointment with the English quintet's true new effort, in any case, has only been postponed. News on the Hoylake boys' front includes the delightful, self-titled second album from Ian Skelly under a brand-new name – The Serpent Power – shared in a lysergic pop joint venture with ex-Zutons man Paul Molloy, and the entry of that very same Molloy into the main band in place of a departing Lee Southall.

It seemed destined to leave no trace, The Curse Of Love, the Coral's rediscovered little treasure, dating back to a hazy, distant transitional phase. It bore all the marks of an anomalous, off-the-cuff release, but it must have left some kind of mark on its authors – more mature by the time of its release – and then some. Proof of this lies in the next step of an otherwise flawless recording career, that Distance Inbetween which the now former Merseyside wonder-boys recorded with Richard Turvey, in Liverpool, during 2015. The tone, the spell and the surrender to disenchantment remain, in fact, the same as on that earlier collection, with the quintet choosing to reposition themselves within a heavier, murkier, more sinister strain of psych-rock, funereal organs aplenty and James Skelly as its dark master of ceremonies, as if Wolf People were taking on tracks from Black Heart Procession's "Six". "White Bird" and "She Runs The River" make that abundantly clear, and amid the assortment of flavours there flashes the ancestral, medieval-tinged expressionism of the latter-day Midlake, amid murky, warped Farfisa tones, guitars left to ferment, and litanies forever oriented towards some other place, a time that seems frozen in a suspended, impenetrable dimension.

Rather than retreating into their usual contemplative, backward-looking hermitage, Coral stage a personal dystopia of unease, a touch claustrophobic ("Chasing The Tail Of A Dream") yet nonetheless convincing. The fragments of yesterday's dusty wonder have given way to this rosary of menacing, live-wire evocations, a sort of obsessive rhythmic liturgy or recurring infection. "Beyond The Sun" is a mournful little page with modest emotional pull. The sun evoked by the title is consistently shrouded in haze. It offers some genuinely captivating glimpses (as does the following "It's You") but simply has no way (nor, to be honest, any interest) in providing warmth. Much the same applies to the twilight mood of the title track, with Skelly delivering superb Doors-style crooning. As the record progresses, the impression grows of an album that's measured and often decadent, whose undeniable expressive coherence can be read, depending on taste, as either a merit or a substantial limitation.

With "Million Eyes" a little light begins to filter through, but the refraction distorts the perspective. The vision comes out warped while the new, robust sound, rich with sinew, keeps emotional spillage to a minimum, as if it were an impassive monolith. The pattern repeats itself right before the close, on "Fear Machine", where the frontman once again conjures the ghost of Jim Morrison only to let it drift off and vanish in a subtle vortex of apathy. The result, orderly in its consistency, ends up feeling both full-blooded and (deliberately) chilly at the same time. What offers scraps of expansiveness, or at least an illusion of warmth, is the single "Miss Fortune". The impression of a distant (if not downright standoffish) record never really fades, so the guitar heroics entrusted to new recruit Molloy opt for measured enchantment rather than any urge toward crowd-pleasing seduction. The craft of a band with unquestionable skill and inventiveness certainly shines through, but for once it has to be filed under "compensation".

The sonic peculiarities of Distance Inbetween, its dark automatisms, that restrained explosiveness or the brio forced into sepia tones, don't leave you indifferent either way. They stand instead as a defining garment, the unforgettable snapshot of the English band now at full maturity.

Ever since rediscovering the thread of their deeply personal retro-musical discourse, Coral haven't stopped. The intriguing Serpent Power - the project of drummer Ian Skelly and guitarist Paul Molloy - released their sophomore effort, "Electric Looneyland", in December 2017, while just two months earlier keyboardist Nick Power, better known until then for his literary ambitions, put out a lovely solo debut, "Caravan". Then, barely a couple of years after its immediate predecessor, the main band returns with a brand-new full-length, Move Through The Dawn, which promises to be the exact opposite of the acclaimed Distance Inbetween. The press release makes this clear enough, citing references to the seventies, the Byrds' endpoint, Phil Spector-style productions by Dion and Ramones, or hypothetical collaborations between Jeff Lynne and the Beach Boys in their troubled early-eighties phase: "we tried to turn the typical feeling of decline in bands that are going to shit into art", singer James Skelly declared with ironic eloquence to the London webzine Gigwise.

That the Merseyside lads had already grown tired of the brooding psychedelic rock of their last outing was easy enough to guess just by looking at the hideous cover of this new effort: an air of general slacking off amid Hawaiian shirts, teardrop sunglasses and panama hats, the same baggy holiday look you'd expect from a band choosing to revisit the soft-rock melancholy of seventies Eagles, which is exactly what happens with unsettling punctuality right from the first two tracks. A rounded, buoyant sound, airy vocal harmonies, an undisputed primacy given to the choruses, songwriting stripped of any frills in agile, keyboard-led tracks: a trivialization of their own long expressive journey, in a sense, even if their embrace of a now-faded aesthetic comes across as sincere and convincing enough. Direct and triumphant, Coral play up a smiling yet nostalgic pose on an album that sounds like a celebration of sun-drenched, far-off summers, an operation not all that different from the one staged by Arctic Monkeys on "Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino", minus the narcissistic, glossy infection that is, thankfully, absent here.

Oversimplification has made the English quintet occasionally predictable and formulaic, though their unspoiled perspective never struggles to assert itself with the odd flash of personality or that higher-caliber pop-rock, rescuing tracks like "Strangers In The Hollow" from the trap of ordinariness and elevating the more successful ones like the spare, almost alt-country ballad "Eyes Of The Moon", powered by a marginal but beautiful epic quality. Not everything works perfectly, but as a whole the album flows pleasantly, demanding little thanks to its surface-level charms and delivering more than one fine moment. On "Sweet Release" the band's catchy power-pop rides on contrived suggestions and a certain threadbare quality of form, but the result is still fairly deadly if you limit yourself to considering pure easy-listening effectiveness. If you're not inclined to give credit to the shadows the music hints at here and there, the inflection leans toward the genial and the optimistic without turning saccharine, so that even filler tracks like "Undercover Of The Night" add to the record's general pleasantness.

If for long stretches it feels like being in the territory of Fruit Bats' "Tripper" (minus one crucial ingredient, the enchantment that kept those songs from being a mere exercise in style) or of the magnificent, crepuscular Electric Soft Parade of the American Adventure, the band recovers scraps of their crisp classicism in the grooves of "She's A Runaway" and especially in the tart guitars of the more biting "Outside My Window", without betraying their new, substantially breezier and, as usual, deeply revivalist stamp. "Stormbreaker" belongs to the same camp, with singer Skelly delivering his lines with real authority and a fitting romantic flair, automatisms that this time around do most of the heavy lifting. The sparse acoustic close of "After The Fair" works in much the same way and recalls the genuine honesty of Butterfly House, without being thrilling but with that reassuring familiarity which is always welcome to find in a new record by the five Liverpudlians, regardless of the sonic direction taken.

2021 is the year of the ambitious Coral Island, the English band's first-ever concept album. The record took shape around the narrative creations of keyboardist Nick Power, framed in an imagined nostalgia for childhood, seen through the eyes of adults remembering intoxicating days dotted with dances and candy floss. Coral let the songs simmer in their trademark dreamy psychedelia. James Skelly's voice yearns throughout, humming melancholy, penetrating melodies.

The first part of the album brims with joy. The single "Lover Undiscovered" skips and glides gracefully, while "Mist On The River", with its opening organ notes, recalls the sound of the excellent Magic And Medicine from 2003.

Among the standout moments is "Vacancy", a timeless adventure built on the chimes of a Wurlitzer wrapped in a dazed melody, immortalizing joyful memories of dance halls buzzing with cheer, an atmosphere masterfully broken by "Autumn Has Come", a track that marks a sharp reversal of the exuberance that had prevailed until then.

Coral Island rightfully ranks among the English band's finest achievements; an intense, nostalgic story that unfolds across 24 tracks depicting a world within another world, an escape from reality that resonates as deeply fantastical yet, underneath it all, damn real.

Riding high on the success of Coral Island, a number two placing in England and chart entries in Germany and Switzerland, Coral released not one but two albums in 2023. The first, Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show, is conceived as a collection of b-sides, a set of tracks interspersed with Ian Murray's spoken narration evoking nocturnal scenes of gas stations, seedy hotels, dark streets and stories of loneliness. Ian Murray's isn't the only outside presence here: the polished guitar lines of "Drifter's Prayer" provide fertile ground for a powerful narration by actor John Simm, and for another page rich in musical-literary magic. The band pulls seductive melodies out of its hat ("Long Drive To The City", "Never Be In Love Like That Again"), dusts off the most nostalgic sounds of their early days ("The Road Is Calling"), as well as the atmospheres of Magic And Medicine for the carefree "Down By The Riverside".

In the band's intentions, Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show is an imaginary western directed by Federico Fellini, the story of a drifting community moving across England in search of a moral and social identity, so the fun skiffle of "Baby Face Nelson" and the constant sixties lightness of the arrangements are more than welcome. The album acts as an appendix, a visual and sonic spin-off, a trait d'union between Coral Island and Sea Of Mirrors, the album that continues Nick Power's story of his own adolescence.

Sea Of Mirrors (2023) is a clever trick, an album that hides mental anguish, impossible loves and stories of loneliness behind limpid melodies, told through blurred, dusty images with the touch of Sergio Leone and the magic of Ennio Morricone ("The Actor And The Cardboard Cowboy"). Don't be fooled by the cowboy-story swagger of "Wild Bird" or the ecstatic singer-songwriter mood of "Child Of The Moon": Sea Of Mirrors is only superficially the band's most American album. Even the washes of strings and delicate sixties airs, skillfully orchestrated by Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas, are nothing more than a cinematic trick.

Inspired and wisely calibrated, Coral dish out songs as genuine as they are mature (the gripping "Cycle Of The Seasons"), throw down more than one challenge by upending the rules (the surreal country-western of "North Wind"), without giving up the natural folk-pop vein that has marked their past work (the splendid "That's Where She Belongs"). Tracks like "Faraway Worlds" tell of old Europe's dream of seeking out new lands to explore, while the closing track "Oceans Apart", with narration by Cillian Murphy (the Irish actor who starred in the film "Oppenheimer"), raises more than one question about the dichotomy of human nature.

Gripping, surreal, ambitious, Sea Of Mirrors is yet another challenge set by Coral, one more sturdy piece in a career that's been remarkably consistent in quality and never short of surprises.

Having completed their crooked trilogy, Coral treat themselves to a break, releasing without any warning an album inspired by a trip to the places where it all began. For a band that has always drawn its main inspiration from dreams, this was a natural step into the world of memory and nostalgia, bringing reggae, soul, ska and doo-wop sounds back to the heart of their music. Made using a Tascam 338 tape recorder — which gives the album its title — the new record 338 (2026) confirms the band's offbeat spirit: hastily lumped in with the Britpop scene, they've always been closer to the exotic psych-pop of The Bees's debut. The only track where faint echoes of the recent trilogy surface, the delightful Beach Boys-style vocal interplay of “Sad Girl”, stays within the bounds of a project where the past is filtered through the graces of Stax/2-tone-style soul exoticism on “Leave It In The Past”, or the biting r&b sound of the collection's most danceable track, “Shame”. For an album that leans mostly towards elegant Jamaican rocksteady (“Let The Music Play”, “Here Comes The Tears”), without this denting the quality of the songwriting (the almost baroque-pop ska of “Yellow Moon”), or producing any inconsistencies (a track like “Crossing The Sands” isn't far removed from the band's early work), it's easy to forgive the faint nod to the Sam Cooke classic “What A Wonderful World” that makes the intriguing doo-wop of “You And Me (And The Beautiful Sea)” all the more endearing.

With “338” Coral once again prove themselves skilled craftsmen of pop music, every bit as pleasingly melancholic on the swaying “High Tide” as they are close to a garage-rock spirit that delivers one of the album's most infectious riffs, “Ride That Train” — but don't get too attached to this momentary guise of the band, since nothing is more unpredictable than a pop group.

Contributions by Gabriele Benzing (“Magic And Medicine”), Cristian Degano (“Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker”), Francesco Giordani (“Butterfly House”), Cristiano Orlando (“Coral Island”) and Gianfranco Marmoro (“Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show” and “Sea Of Mirrors”, “388”)

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