Bido Lito June 2021 Issue 114

THE
CORAL
On their 10th album, The Coral have never sounded so timeless – quite literally –
as they bottle the spectres from a world of sticky clock hands and fading lights.
In one regard, the new album by THE CORAL is very
much them all over. Shiny toe-tappers threaded with
the more complex. The familiar Liverpool scally pop
and Welsh psychedelic hybrid bonds are ever true.
But with Coral Island we see further ambition not merely
as a masterclass in musical and creative world-building,
but in real terms. James Skelly sets out his targets
humbly but with good humour during the second time
we speak. “If you can break back into the top 10 in the
UK charts on your 10th album – a concept album about a
mythical seaside town with your grandad in it – it will be
our biggest achievement since we got our number one.”
He chuckles as he speaks, but it’s an accurate analysis
of both album and scenario. Second album Magic And
Medicine hit the top of the album chart back in 2003 and
18 years is a long time in rock ’n’ roll.
Coral Island waltzes us into a magical place of
unspoken questions, reflecting on the
faded glamour and unsettling nature
of the fairground, the sounds, motion
and people encountered. The album
and accompanying book Over Coral
Island, the latter written by keyboard
player Nick Power, recalls the band’s
childhood summer trips across Wales
and the North West. Wirral’s very
own seaside town, New Brighton,
feels the ideal place to meet James
and Nick to talk about their hopes
for the record. We rendezvous on a
stretch of flat grey concrete yards
from the seafront. Paper cups of tea
and coffee in the open air is quite the
thing now, but undeniably it has an
echo of bygone times and black and
white photographs in family albums.
Any artist’s 10th long-player is a milestone, we
each agree, although the two men seem uneasy at
being described as indie veterans, a term popping
up in reviews with frequency. This point in time feels
significant, not make-or-break exactly, but optimism in
our conversation is offset by frustrations at the music
industry, and personal regrets.
The first section of the album, a soundtrack to the
rides and arcades of summer fairground childhoods, is
bathed in a brittle sunshine not unlike that in which we
squint at each other on this Tuesday morning. Part one
encompasses an idealistic memory, one maybe never
really lived at all, James and Nick tell me. The sadness
of nostalgia and a time gone by start to sink in further
as the record progresses, and we are introduced to the
curious characters living in society’s shadows.
After an hour of talking, we go our separate ways;
James and Nick to carry on with further promotion.
This album is grabbing more attention from journalists
than anything they’ve done for a while. During our
conversation we’d talked about the role post-Elvis,
pre-Beatles rock ’n’ roll and pop played in Coral Island’s
formation. A strange yet fruitful few years of death
ballads and vengeful love songs, giving a voice to the
deep emotional intensity of the emerging teenage
experience and identity. Coral Island’s songs are short,
in keeping with pop conventions of that period. And
what an absolute pleasure it is to hear and feel the
influence of eternal broken-hearted outcast on the run
Del Shannon. This led to playing some of his records at
home afterwards and unearthing a memory of riding the
Waltzer in Southport with his classic Runaway ringing
in ears.
Within days, all the audio from our interview has
vanished, so we find ourselves having to talk again
two weeks
later, a surreal
experience
in itself. Nick
“Coral Island was
more this strange
place just floating in
the sea of your mind.
Almost a metaphor
for your imagination”
is the first to
retrace his
steps. It seems
appropriate
to share the
Del Shannon
in Southport
theory.
“I think
they’re still
playing it now!
You have to play
pre-Beatles rock
’n’ roll spooky
death ditties
with a little bit of Pink Floyd thrown in, and The Doors
every now and then, some 80s, but go back to Gene
Vincent and Wanda Jackson. It’s brilliant!” Nick laughs. “I
think it’s an unwritten code fairgrounds stick to.”
Why does he think that is?
“They’re marginalised places, aren’t they?
Totally off the map, never written about any more in
mainstream culture. It’s outsider music. That’s what we
tried to get across, another world in the real world. An
unreality in reality.”
Nick talks about The Dips in New Brighton, the green
space used by families, and for performance or anti-social
behavior depending on what time of day or year. How the
fair sets up there, a sudden pop-up town. In the eve it’s
kite-flying and dog walkers, the next morn dodgems blast
out Roy Orbison and The Shangri-Las’ drama.
“You might see a poster in a few closed down shops
or chippys,” he says of the fair. “How did they get in?
FEATURE
How did that poster get in there? That shop hasn’t been
open for years. Then you’ll see it – bang – and the next
night it’s gone. Magic.”
Coral Island morphed into a double album as the
band worked on it, he explains, expanded by James
and Ian Skelly’s grandfather Ian Murray in the character
of The Great Muriarty narrating between songs. It’s
difficult to recall many contemporary double albums in
the independent music arena, so Coral Island is either an
anomaly, or maybe we simply make more space and time
for things now. The album does play around with past
and present and it’s true that, when we’re kids, summer
holidays last forever, while cold hard adult reality
confirms a fixed six-week length.
“There’s a bit in the book about that, your experience
of time, it massively changes as you get older,” says Nick.
“Small things when you’re a kid seem mind-blowing.
You’re in the present, totally rooted in the now. When
you get older you live in the past or future a bit more,
memories or anticipating.”
Nailing down radio-friendly singles Faceless Angel,
Lover Undiscovered, and Vacancy gave licence to sail
into deeper, darker waters. Coral Island was created
with a 1960s approach, writing and recording quickly
while everything was still fresh. “This album was kinda
like, let’s go for broke. Make something which the record
company might advise against! If we can get the money
for it, let’s just do what we want,” Nick explains.
There is a strong narrative present, not only due
to the spoken word, but noticeably so within the
songwriting itself. The listener, and presumably the
creators, go on a journey along with it?
“It goes back to folk tales and things like that, or
murder ballads or weird character studies. I love songs
that tell a story, a lot of the ones we drew from for this
album are like that, tell a story – mostly about people
dying,” Nick laughs. “But as you said last time, it was
early goth!”
“There’s a lot in there, we very rarely just tell a
straight story,” James Skelly explains, when we pick
things up. He resists temptation to write literally, leaving
enough suggestion for people to project their own
stories. “The version in your head is always going to be
better because you’ve made it for you.”
The Great Muriarty, then, could be the ringmaster
of the big top, or delivering Roald Dahl’s quite terrifying
scenarios in the old Tales Of The Unexpected series.
Sinister and not ghostlike exactly, but from behind an
invisible veil.
“That doesn’t exist anymore, the world he’s
from, that generation,” says James of his story-teller
grandfather who took him camping as a boy – these
memories feeding into the record. “So, he’s actually, in
a way, a time traveller. Like he’s going back to an older
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