Initial reports had this album as a lo-fi oddity, a wilfully difficult collection of works in progress and half-sketched ideas that would be of interest to rabid fans and completists only. It stood to reason: modern bands release an album every two to three years, spending the intervening period hammering promo in key territories and seducing fellow celebrities in the back rooms of private members clubs. A new album after less than a year just can't be up to scratch.
The Coral, of course, don't play by contemporary rules. They never have. Their startling debut was the answer to the question "What happens if six ridiculously talented young men grow up in a coastal town with headfuls of creativity and f*ck all to do?" and not much has changed a few years on. Back in Hoylake, it seems, the old lifestyle and boredom reappeared and, buzzing with the restless confidence of being at the top of their game, The Coral - oops - just wrote another album. Because they could.
The result is a rather more satisfying record than their second. "Magic And Medicine" was The Coral in primary colours, eccentric edges smoothed off to form nagging choruses and user-friendly storytelling. Album three is a far subtler beast, both musically and lyrically. The band's ability to skilfully build layers of slight melody and momentum is clearly maturing at a grand pace and James Skelly has started to find deeper emotion in his skewed observations of the world.
A perfect example is "Sorrow Or The Song". In the company of a melody drenched with shifting loneliness, Skelly wonders "Where do I belong?/The sorrow or the song". "Song Of The Corn" is better still. Continuing the group¹s obsession with the spooky ambience of "The Wicker Man", it's more of an incantation than a simple pop ditty, a chilling string of "scarecrows", "rumours of strangers being buried alive" and "blackbirds and barn yards and chills up my spine". "Keep Me Company" adds to the atmosphere with a haunting moment of pastoral beauty, half rural isolation, half offhand strangeness.
There are some jokier songs too - that fizzing creative energy has a fierce sense of humour as well, of course. "Auntie's Operation" is a jagged garage rock tune (with a burst of strolling troubadour every now and then) about, well:"she wants your sympathy/never lets you be". "Migraine" and "I Forgot My Name", meanwhile, are stomping Nuggets-style slices of faux insanity in the vein of "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night". All fun, naturally, but not quite as affecting as the quieter, more unusual tracks.
Best of all, though, is "Grey Harpoon", which almost manages to sum up what makes The Coral so special. Again, sounding like he's intoning the words to a ritual, Skelly sings "please don't let the light through my window/keep the curtain shut/it brings me good luck/don't want to see the day/I don't need it anyway". While other British bands do their best to immerse themselves in the modern world the politics, the hip musical influences, the haircuts, the tawdry circus of pop culture - The Coral shut themselves determinedly away, finding genuine originality in the darkest corners.
Here's to album four sometime this summer, then.
