The Coral: Butterfly House (Shock)

 |   |  <1 min read

The Coral: Two Faces
The Coral: Butterfly House (Shock)

Sometimes sounding like an odd collision in the studio of early Echo and the Bunnymen and America, Liverpool's the Coral here deliver their big songs (big on melody, choruses, drama and references) with enjoyable passion but never quite approach that frisson they had on their thrilling self-titled debut album of '02.

However these lightly-delic and powerfully pop-conscious songs (produced by John Leckie whose credits include Radiohead and Stone Roses) have a kind of understated grandeur -- you think they are orchestrated but aren't, and surprisingly only the closer North Parade (at six minutes) stretches beyond the 3.45 mark.

So these are economic but expansive pop and included here are two co-writes with Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds), both men who know a perfect pop chord progression inside out.

With those folk-country influences which have always been an element of their style, songs like Green is the Colour of Her Eyes and the finger-picking Falling All Around You are immediately endearing, and their Sixties vocal harmonies and guitar jangle come to the fore in Two Faces (the co-write Broudie which could have fallen off a mid-period Monkees album -- and that's a compliment).

There are a lot of albums competing for attention but this one -- very favourably reviewed in the UK -- is one of those that has much more to offer than most if your heart appreciates ambitious pop with side benefits of clever references to smile at. 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Dictaphone Blues: Beneath the Crystal Palace (EMI)

Dictaphone Blues: Beneath the Crystal Palace (EMI)

Like Marty McFly at the high school dance in Back to the Future, Ed Castelow of Dictaphone Blues has beamed himself back to crucial touchstones in pop-rock (classic Fifties chords, Beatles era... > Read more

Guided by Voices: English Little League (Fire)

Guided by Voices: English Little League (Fire)

Longtime loyalists of this once important alt-rock band from Ohio (b. 1983) enjoyed their exciting outsider pre-grunge rock then endured indifferent albums, line-up changes around core... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

James Cotton: Cotton Mouth Man (Alligator/Southbound)

James Cotton: Cotton Mouth Man (Alligator/Southbound)

It's extraordinary to think that harmonica player Cotton played with Howlin' Wolf back in the early Fifties and then Muddy Waters, and at 77 he's not only still here but blowing up a hurricane on... > Read more

Mink De Ville: Return to Magenta (1978)

Mink De Ville: Return to Magenta (1978)

The curious things about the life of Willy De Ville was not that he succumbed to pancreatic cancer in early August 2009, but that he had lived so long. He was 58 when he died -- but from the time... > Read more