Dishing Out The Medicine

When we meet up with The Coral on their return to Dublin they are, to put it kindly, a little on the prickly side. Taking exception to stepping straight into an interview, they immediately disappear and leave hotpress hanging around for the best part of an hour.

On their return, singer James Skelly takes umbrage at our review of their latest Magic & Medicine album, throwing the magazine away in disgust before storming out. Bassist Paul is in similarly bad form and also departs in a visible huff.

Which is very odd, given that the review is largely positive if relatively low on hyperbole. Though there is some – and I quote: “The Coral are great musicians – every track on this album is executed with flair and skill and invested with a woozy charm.”

It’s the kind of praise most 20-year-olds would frame and stick over the mantelpiece – but then The Coral are hugely ambitious as well as spikily independent. It comes through in their music, which follows no theme except The Coral’s own, and which is as thematically challenging as it is musically accomplished. The influences may be classic – Lee Hazelwood, Scott Walker, Sergio Leone and Parisian cabaret among them – but there’s a pop immediacy about The Coral which suggests they might just have what it takes to go global.

We’re left to talk to guitarists Bill Ryder-Jones and Lee Southall who are a little more easy going than their Coral brethern.

Given that their debut album – a brave statement of intent that was appropriately called The Coral – was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2002, the speed with which Magic & Medicine was released came as a bit of a surprise.

“We try not to think about stuff like that. The albums are what they are,” Bill says. “You can tell certain things about us from the first album and see how we’ve changed from the second album”.

In these days when bands can continue to sell an album for what seems like forever, did The Coral have to fight their corner to get this one out?
“We had to state our case to the record company to go back into the studio,” he confirms. “You have to recognise who you’re talking to. They’re not arsed about creativity. Most record companies don’t know how to market creativity; they’d rather just market one album for eight fucking years.”

Although the band are all in their late teens or early twenties (“Urban Hymns came out during our last year at school,” points out Lee), what has marked their card with many people is their awareness that musical history didn’t just begin when Oasis released Definitely Maybe.
“I don’t think that proper fans are concerned with how far back we go,” Bill counters. “They should just see it as a new thing. It would be a lot easier than talking about periods of music like a shelf in a library or something. It’s just music. That’s the way we see it”.

Another reason for the excitement surrounding the band is that they are seen as heralding the brave new dawn of the Liverpool music scene. Great… except of course that they’re not from Liverpool but from Hoylake, over the water of the Mersey estuary in the Wirral.
Bill laughs. “No-one understands that. No-one ever asks us about it,” he observes.
“It’s easier for people to recognise Liverpool”, says Lee.

“Our relationship with Liverpool has been strange”, continues Bill. “At the start they knew we weren’t from there so they didn’t like us and the after the album they were like, ‘The Coral, yeah, they’re from Liverpool’. Proper Liverpudlians are anti Manchester, London, anywhere that’s not Liverpool. The Wirral is seen as a terrible place, they hate it.

“It’s weird how we get treated as Liverpool’s sons. It’s even weirder where we come from. They haven’t a clue. They’ve heard The Coral and think we are a Liverpool band.”
So now you know what not to say to The Coral next time you meet ‘em!

Thus we depart, bombarded with record company apologies for the earlier scenes. In a way, though, it’s quite refreshing to come across a band who have so little interest in playing the game.

It may lead to the odd awkward moment but it also manifests itself in The Coral’s music and their willingness to take chances and do their own thing.
It might just be the quality that guarantees them longevity. b

Magic And Medicine is out now on Deltasonic