Bryan Thomas (All Music Guide)

The Coral's jocular self-titled debut kicked up quite a flurry of excitement when it washed ashore in the summer of 2002. Many reviewers gave a hearty cry of "Avast Ye Maties" when they discovered the band was from the picturesque seaside village of Hoylake, a deep-water anchorage in the borough of Wirral. Not since the Beatles, or perhaps even Echo & the Bunnymen, has a young band from England's blustery western coast caused this much commotion. Other critics have focused on their ages; at 21, lead singer/guitarist James Skelly was the oldest when this album was recorded, but the rest of these landlubbers were considerably younger, averaging somewhere closer to 19. The fantastic voyage that is The Coral, however, is the real discovery. The album begins with a two-minute psych-rock sea shanty, "Spanish Main," which bursts forth with a frothy and joyous refrain that sounds inspired by Treasure Island or Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, perhaps. Along the way, the boys pick their way through somewhat-discarded flotsam and jetsam genres (mostly from the '60s), including 1964-era Merseybeat, horn-driven ska, fuzzed-out acid rock, and Brit-pop psychedelia. The aforementioned critics have fallen all over themselves trying to distill the Coral's various influences, name-checking a wide range of West Coast bands — the Doors, Love, the Beach Boys, the Mothers, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and even the Banana Splits — and even tossing in a handful of Londoners, like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and the Action. Others have opted to categorize the Coral as sounding closer, at least in spirit, to the Beta Band, Shack, or — a personal favorite — "a scouse Primal Scream on a skiffle tip" (former Shack drummer Alan Wills, by the way, is their manager and manages their label, Deltasonic, as well). "Shadows Fall" is where this adventurous tale really finds its sea legs; the Top 30 U.K. single features an eccentric salmagundi of styles and sounds, including barbershop quartet vocals, Madness-style pop-ska, Russian Cossack folk, and a subtle Morricone-esque harmonica. The result is a bit jarring, but there's a fervent originality at work here, despite all of the referencing of the halcyon past. "Dreaming of You" is probably an even better example of what the Coral have to offer, with strong lead vocals and suitably cheeseball organ. "Simon Diamond" is effervescent 1967-style British psych-pop (Nirvana U.K. or Kaleidoscope U.K., take your pick), while the rambunctious "Skeleton Key" blends Zappa-esque guitars, serpentine Middle Eastern melodies, and flavorful horns. In addition to a massive heaping of critical praise, the Coral also managed to connect with an audience who plunked down enough gold doubloons to help this album land in the U.K.'s Top Ten charts. The Coral was subsequently nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

Louis Pattison (Amazon.com)

While the fiery rock & roll spirit of the La's Lee Mavers courses through their veins, the debut album by youthful Liverpudlian mystics the Coral prove they are far more than Merseybeat imitators. The opening "Spanish Main" ("We've set sail again! / We're heading for the Spanish Main!") casts the sextet as marauding pirates, out to pillage musical history for loot. It's possible to hear the influence of everything from Captain Beefheart to Miles Davis, from Spanish mariachi music to Cossack dance rhythms, surfacing between the tight, ragged grooves of "I Remember When" and "Shadows Fall." This album is stuffed to bursting point with ideas that are presented with remarkable clarity. Highlights are the curious, swooping fable of "Simon Diamond" and the insane "Skeleton Key," which finds frontman James Skelly croaking, "Solid gold skeleton key / Opens the most intricate lock / Brother, roll another for me / I am shipwrecked on the rocks!" as his bandmates caw like parrots in the background. The Coral are off on a totally mental trip. It would take a fool, however, to choose not to join them.

David Sprague (Barnes & Noble)

As colorful as their namesake -- and just as likely to snare casual passersby with jagged edges -- this Brit sextet call to mind the Day-Glo heyday of Swinging London, when Syd Barrett held court in a swirl of feedback and surreal imagery. At times harsh (the frayed-nerve rocker "Skeleton Key"), at times drawing-room serene, the Coral demonstrate a knack for gussying up hummable melodies with the oddest of instrumentation. Snippets of organ, accordion, and trumpet dart in and out of lushly arranged numbers like "Simon Diamond" and "Badman" (the latter of which displays a Townshend-ian lyrical bent), while more coolly restrained numbers, such as "Dreaming of You," cleave to the sweet melodicism of prime-period Brian Wilson. While the band occasionally go over the top in attempting to cram a multitude of ideas into each tune, there's a certain fascination in seeing just how high they can go before things topple -- and as often as not, the heights are dizzying indeed.

(CD Universe)

Picture the scene if you will, you're sat in your parents' front room in Liverpool with the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd rolling the spliffs, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention jamming in the corner, and The La's looking on in wondrous bemusement before joining in. Mad? Possibly, but that is the scene that rolls through the mind as The Coral's debut long-player comes to an end. A more disparate and yet strangely coherent collection of moods and styles you will not hear this year outside a supremely eclectic compilation. 'The Coral' is the sound of a band saying 'Why don't we try this' as they attempt to distil all of their influences into one exhilarating musical soup - which is kind of the whole point of debut albums. And while most bands wouldn't dream of throwing in anywhere near as disparate a range of styles, that only makes the end result more unique. Weird but mostly wonderful.

Darryl Sterdan (JAM! Music / Winnipeg Sun, October 18, 2002)

Pay attention now, 'cause this is going to get weird.

You know those transporter-pod things from The Fly? And that time-machine car from Back to the Future?

OK. So let's say you put 'em together into a time-travelling pod-car or something. Then imagine you parked it on L.A.'s Sunset Strip in the Summer of Love. And you crammed all the best bands of the day -- The Doors, The Mothers, The Turtles, Love, The Beach Boys, Captain Beefheart, The Seeds -- into the backseat, set the controls for a present-day U.K. recording studio and hit the gas. But let's say you picked up Bob Marley and Syd Barrett and The Specials hitch-hiking along the way. OK?

So you land in 2002, open the door to find that all those bands have been gene-spliced into one magnificent neo-psychedelic, ska-tinged, '60-rock outfit, and usher them into the studio. This is the album they would make: A spellbinding, mind-bending amalgam of classic pop songcraft, trippy echo-chamber dementia and genre-busting invention. And it's all the product of a bunch of Liverpool teens (the singer is the old man of the group at 21).

See? We told you it was going to get weird.

Jason Fox (New Musical Express)

Dunno how it happened. But thanks to a glitch in the time-space continuum, The Coral's brilliant, bizarre debut album arrives with us in mid-2002, fresh from the British beat boom of 1964. En route they've navigated their way via Country Joe & The Fish, Leadbelly, Motown, The Doors, Russian Cossack music, the (early) Specials, The Action, Hawaiian instrumentals, WWF wrestling, Scouse luminaries The Stairs and Shack (former drummer Alan Wills, fittingly, is their manager) and, most probably, Captain Birdseye. It's so nautically-inclined you can almost smell the fishing nets. And all the work of six straggly youths from Hoylake, Merseyside - where else? - the eldest of whom, leather-lunged singer James Skelly, weighs in at a wizened 21. Too much.

In The Coral's company, the usual critical shorthand isn't so much made redundant as turned into hieroglyphics. Take 'Goodbye'. Stomping rhythm 'n' blues for two minutes, then suddenly the guitars flip into gonzo-punk overload and then whoooosh, it's turned into that dream sequence bit in 'Wayne's World 2' where Wayne meets Jim Morrison in the desert, before wriggling to a triumphant conclusion in four minutes flat.

Tunes so joyous you thought they only existed on dusty 45s in ancient pub jukeboxes appear regularly through the mist. 'Dreaming Of You' is two minutes and 19 seconds of yearning pop confusion ('I still need you but/I don't want you') to rival both The Teardrop Explodes' 'When I Dream' and Madness' 'My Girl' (told you it was weird); 'Skeleton Key' is a deranged Frank Zappa tribute that morphs into a gothic mariachi shuffle and finally, sublime, slippery Grace Jones disco and 'Shadows Fall', as you know, features the first ever marriage of ragtime, Egyptian reggae and barbershop on record. All orchestrated by Joe Meek (sombrero's off, incidentally, to Ian Broudie for an impeccable production).

But The Coral display not the slightest trace of Gomez-ian worthiness, just an insane joy at being able to make an album that, as James has gone on record as saying, sounds 'timeless'. Only the Super Furriesand Gorky's would dare show such disrespect for the rulebook, but even they, you suspect, would draw the line at skiffle-driven Gregorian sea shanties.

As a final 'Calendars & Clocks' suggests ('Descendants of joy/ return the father to the boy'), The Coral have ventured into rock's pre-history in their quest for fresh musical plunder and the outcome is the funniest, most refreshing British debut in years.

Chris Dahlen (Pitchfork Media, October 13, 2002)

Sea shanties. That's right. They play sea shanties.

Of course, that's just one of a million things The Coral does on their hyper-eclectic debut, a pop pastiche that jumps across a dozen genres during the course of its 40+ minutes. And though the just-out-of-their-teens sextet, who come from a "nondescript seaside town" outside Liverpool, are as diverse and well-polished as their fellow NME cabin boys The Vines, you at least aren't overcome with the urge to punch these kids in the face. After all, The Coral are much more talented, and singer James Skelly's confident, sneer-free vocals lend just the right amount of weight to the music. I'm guessing he'll sound even better after he takes up clove cigarettes and whiskey.

We first heard about The Coral back in September of last year when, during an interview, Clinic mentioned them to us as one of their favorite bands of the moment. The two sound nothing alike, of course, excepting that their influences are far too numerous to list. One thing I can say with some certainty, though, is that The Coral must have grown up digging through their mums' Merseybeat vinyl and dads' psych-rock collections: the first spaceshot note on the album cribs from Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play", and the bridge to "Goodbye" references it a bit, too, though while sounding predominantly like a Turtles song. Elsewhere, the folky "Simon Diamond" sets the life of the professional wrestler to a bouncy remake of the old traditional, "John Barleycorn Must Die", and extra guitars whiz around like bugs, with Nick Power's organ needling home the period feel.

With a quick-stepping rhythm section and two horn players in the band (Bill Ryder-Jones on trumpet, Paul Duffy on sax), The Coral also take a reasonable stab at British ska-pop; "Dreaming of You" sounds like Jim Morrison fronting Madness. It's a likeable single, but it would have blown away like so much fluff twenty years ago; and while it proves that the band is capable of turning out well-produced dance numbers, the most disposable tracks-- like "Bad Man"-- mark them as this close to becoming England's answer to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

So as weird as it may seem, it's on the sea shanties that the band finds its voice. For whatever reason, they really open up on the nautically themed tracks: "Skeleton Key" is a massive beatdown where the pounding drums and jittery guitars set up a bellowing chorus; the verse-only opener "Spanish Main" makes them sound like genuinely scary men of the sea. And even on a quieter numbers like "Shadows Fall", the reggae beat and laborers' harmony vocals blend well with the sax part, psychedelic frills, and shuffle.

Sometimes the band seems more curious than inventive. They're swollen up with ideas but don't always have an original hook or clear idea to attach them to. There's definitely a lot to like throughout this disc; the band has boatloads of talent, and the eclectic spread gels much better than you'd expect. But they're at their best when they're more raucous than clever. If the sea shanties work for any reason, it's because they're labor songs, tunes about working hard and playing hard. That's a great lifestyle for any young band, and a better goal than just ripping off the 60s.

Stuart Maconie (Q Magazine, November 2002)

There really must be something in the water. How else to explain the fact that, Cream and Atomic Kitten notwithstanding, each generation of Liverpudlian youth looks back through a herbal fug to Pink Floyd and Captain Beefheart for their cultural landmarks. The Coral hail from coastal Hoylake, which perhaps explains the distinctly salty air to songs which talk of sailing the Spanish Main set to melodies straight from a Baltic fishing fleet.


Forget the Bunnymen comparisons; Mac's men are the most earnest of bands whereas The Coral nurture Syd Barrett's inner child. Sometimes this works to derail them, as in the irritating burlesque time-changes or cod-big band accompaniment on Shadow Falls, presumably added while producer Ian Broudie was down at the coffee machine. Nevertheless, you are defied to listen to this without a smile on your face. The Coral are clever, zesty and kaleidoscopic and sometimes, as in the Mannfred Man homage or the unhinged Skeleton Key, quite brilliant.


The Coral aren't the future of rock'n'roll but they embrace huge, heady, aromatic swathes of its past and they could be the sound of a summer or two to come.

Robert Christgau (Rolling Stone, issue 918)

The Coral are six young geezers from suburban Liverpool who have captured the eager hearts of Britain's musical cognoscenti. Their selling point is an eclecticism that evades Oasis-style overkill with compact songs that hop all over the place -- horn fills and Nuggets riffs, triangle and accordion, playful echo and stereo effects, varied harmonies that distract from the absence of a distinctive lead voice, rhythm shifts (natch), and a song called "Skeleton Key" that could literally have been inspired by Beefheartian New York undergrounders Skeleton Key. The band has a loosely Eastern European aura that recalls not Beatles-Floyd studio psychedelica but the Bay Area's famously eclectic Kaleidoscope, who imported the oud to rock with no discernible effect. Granted, the Coral's commercial grounding is much more solid, as on the barely bent pop songs "Dreaming of You" and "Waiting for the Heartaches." Whether it can be imported to the U.S. is another question.