[The Zion Egg]: Articles (Press)

Appeared in The NME, 5th of January 2002

The Coral

Skinning up by the sea, contemplating pirate ships and Byker Grove, six scouse stoners stumble upon something very special indeed.

Text: Sylvia Patterson Photography: Perouinc.com

Group Pic

The Coral are direct, polar opposite of So Solid Crew, on a sale from infinity one way to infinity the other way. They have no idea whatsoever why the garage gangstas should be, as they're known, the Voice Of Ver Kids On Ver Street.

"Are they?" chokes James Skelly, 21, Coral singer/guitarist, perched on a sofa in the table tennis/pool area of a recording studio. "Are they for real? Are they a real band? Ah, mate! To me, it's utter fockin' shiiiiit. It's not the voice from my streets!"

"There's no bling bling on our streets," adds Bill Ryder-Jones, 18, guitarist and trumpeteer, skinning up some minty west coast 'rocky'. "We're the So Stoned Crew."

"I don't know one person who likes them," adds James. "They must just be so big in London they've canceled out the rest of the country."

Bill: "Mr. T. He's the original bling bling. That's all the So Solid Crew are, a rip-off of The A-Team."

James: "Eh... they're not gonna shoot us are they? 'Cos I really can't be arsed with being shot! To me it's forget all that bullshit about guns, there's enough of that shit goin' on, where d'you get time to think about guns when you're doin' music? It would weigh me down, I'm too knackered on tour. I'm weighed down enough - I've gorra limp!"

Why's that then?

James: "We've got big dicks."

Bill: "Yeah, don't forget that..."

The polar opposite, then, other than the fact they're blokes.

We're in Milton Keynes, in a manor house, circled by crunchy gravel, in grounds with flat-top African trees and a lake the colour of moss, where two members of the nation's newest, and foremost, spook-rock art-pop visionaries are musing on how, one day, they hope to inspire lust in the loins of the nation, as proper rock'n'roll must. Even 30-year-old women.

"A lot of women like a bit of boy in 'em," twinkles James, possibly correctly.

The Coral are nothing to do with glam or adopted Americana and everything to do with working class, provincial Britain laughing in the face of a culture it doesn't believe in. Five of The Coral are 18 and 19, theirs a generation which has, almost comprehensively, blocked out the bollocks bombarding their view since Britpop died and the marketing men moved in, a generation which doesn't bother listening to the radio, which floated off it's designated 'demographic' straight from musical birth.

"I don't even think about what's on the radio," chirps James. "I get up and stick Harry Nilsson on, just been in me own world, like. The only thing I feel about the state of everything at the moment is that music has been forgotten and been replaced by attitude. Which I think came from punk. All the people I know who are really into punk are old farts. None of me mates are into it, my age. It's old farts hanging on to that attitude 'cos they couldn't be arsed learning an instrument. I've always aspired to be able to play, I don't think it's cool to not be able to play your instrument, it's shit."

Bill: "When punk came out, music needed the kick, but I reckon now, it's reversed, and I reckon the punk could do with some music."

The Coral were discovered by accident, in rehearsal, by Alan Wills, a Liverpudlian verbal powerhouse who drummed in Shack for years, and immediately created a label for them, Deltasonic. Last year they released two EPs, 'Shadows Fall' and ' The Oldest Path'; seven songs of infinite creative wizardry - all woozy harmonicas, bendy guitars, spectral harmonies, echoey dreamscapes, ragtime wig-outs, Russian folk and twinkling pilgrim-pop in a fairytale picture-book - from a band who sound, sometimes, like bawdy pub-life on a seven-sailed ship at the end of the 19th century. They've a song, 'The Ballads Of Simon Diamond', about a man who looks like a plant: "Now he's swapped his legs for roots, his arms and soil are in cahoots". They also sound like they could be a front for a Mythical Sea Creatures Soul Review; the curtain goes up behind them... and there's willowy mermaids on vibes and fiddler crabs with their claws in the air.

"Well, that's the kind of thing I wanna evoke," grins James. "But there's only about two songs about the sea. By our standards, we haven't really released anything good yet 'cos everything's been rushed. 'The Oldest Path' is a B-side. I can't wait to show people something where we can go, 'That's brilliant, that's what we're into.'"

It could be said there's 'Marillion vibes' in your music.

James "Oh really!? I know what you mean. Goblins."

The Coral, already, are six years old, a band formed at Hillbury high school in the mid-'90s in Hoylake, a seaside town 15 minutes outside Liverpool on the Wirral. James and his brother Ian (drums) recruited Lee Southall (guitar/vocals) who, to this day, looks like "a Kosovan refugee". Back then, they took him home to their mum and told her he really was a Kosovan refugee. For some time the 13-year-old Lee didn't have the faintest clue why Mrs. Skelly would address him like a war evacuee: "Would... you... like... more... food?" Alongside Nick Power (organ, vocals)and Paul Duffy (bass, saxophone) and the winningly sardonic Bill, they started writing songs which were "utter shit", learned to play Oasis' 'Married With Children' ("Oasis were fockin' boss, a 'fock you' to everyone"), became "a bit cyber rock" and over the years gleaned considerable musical knowledge of Bo Diddley, the Everly Brothers, Led Zeppelin, The Verve, The Beatles, Public Enemy, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Woody Guthrie, the Beach Boys, "classical, film music, everything, anything that's good, basically".

Like The Beta Band and the Super Furries, theirs is a rule-free sonic experiment, self-taught players of "xylophones, trumpets, glocks, anything, things we don't know the names of, or combined sounds, like Motown used to, like mixing colours". They don't sound like scallies because they're not.

"Out robbin' cars with Tinhead," guffaws James. "I wouldn't have a fockin' clue how to rob a car, the alarm'd go off, I'd start crying and run away. None of us can even drive, like. We're nice lads!"

The members of The Coral went to college, decided that it was "shit"; there was "a problem with authority" (James) and "with musos" (Bill). Instead, they worked to earn money to pay for demos and took to writing songs in a bus shelter by the sea -where they could also have a smoke, living as they did, as they still do, at home with their folks.

"Sometimes you go down there and think on your own", wists James, "and there's nothing down there but the wind. No one can touch you there. I'll write a song and think about a pirate ship and they're all doing the jig, like in Peter Pan, singing to each other..."

Do you stare at the stars, thinking about living on a ball in infinity, and ponder the 'why?' of the universe?

"I've done that in the past and it's 'Aaaargh!'" squally James. "I've had theories. Like, this is too perfect, it's all in relation, to be an accident. And I've realised that the best thing to do, that I've learnt off me gran and grandad, is just to accept it. Do the garden. Have yer dinner. And live. Otherwise you'll go crazy."

These days, of course, mankind has never been so officially rumbled as useless. Twenty-first century reality, man; it's a rum do.

"That's right," nods James, "so I just think, 'Just make music.' I don't like reality! I'd rather hide from it and make tunes. Anyway, what's reality? That's not my reality! Me dad blagged me 'ead the other week. That bin Laden was gonna bomb every major city, including Liverpool, and he goes 'So you're gonna die before November' and he shook me hand. I ab-so-luuutely shit meself, sitting there like that (head in hands) an' me mum was in on it! And me little brother and sister, all keepin' a straight face. I was sitting there, horrified, goin' down into a black hole holdin' me girlfriend's hand... And if I ever find out she was in on it I'm gonna kill 'er."

They're good lads, The Coral. They like BMX bikes, make their own films of disjointed kung-fu capers, loathe "hippies, even worse than punks", think Starsailor are "the Devil", and believe in Being Luke Skywalker; "not a tough rebel like James Dean, but like Luke Skywalker, 'I'm a bit of a pussy but I've got a lightsaber'". Fighters for sonic freedom, the intrigue of their musical present could yet become the Great of the future. Already, there's a Coral tribute band; a one-man dementia cavalcade called Woi-Oi Boy.

James: "He's just some lad at the gigs who goes 'Woi-Oi Boy's bigger than George Bush'. Nor'avin' that!"

They're big readers - of suicidal fisherman Ernest Hemingway in particular - expressive talkers and poetic thinkers who have no intention of following the perceived Scouse-rock smackhead under-achievement legacy of The La's and Shack.

"I think that's more about not giving a shit about fame or money or playing the game," decides James. "The Head brothers, they just wanted to make music and sometimes they couldn't be arsed! If it happens to use, that's what happens, but I hope we can go all the way. But two brilliant albums is still more of an achievement than Ned the binman, d'youknowworrimean?"

Buoyed by profound optimism, they believe the rock'n'roll uprising is imminent and approve of The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Music and labelmates The Mountaineers and The Zootones. They love TV almost as much as music, except, of course, for the gonks of televisual celebrity.

"John Leslie," withers James, "look at 'im! Fockin' Ben Shepherd (ex-Big Breakfast). Straight out of the fun factory. What are these people? I enjoy anger about TV celebrities, that's a big part of us. We just sit 'ere and  an' go, 'Fockin' knobhead!' Jamie Theakston. He isn't even a human being. Theakston, subordinate to the Devil."

Bill: "If the Devil was on Earth, man, he's be like Pierce Brosnan, someone with a sculpted fockin' head. Scott Bakula."

James: "We like Vernon (Kay). He just likes getting his end away and having a few drinks..."

Bill: "Vernon's a Bolton supporter, he's sound."

James: "Byker Grove. I connected to that."

Bill: "A good TV programme while I'm havin' me tea means so much. All we need is someone to fall off the roof and this'd be a proper Byker Grove. A few flamin' book cases... 'Look out!' Byker Grove means more to me than..."

James: "Anythin'."

What The Coral aren't, then, are dope-rock missionaries of a John 'The Light' Power 'persuasion', harbingers of love-is-the-answer philosophical mimsery and the mystical Merseybeat way. They've never had an alien speak in their ear, like John Power once did, and say the word 'human'.

"Pthrt!" froths James. "Why would they pick him ahead of anyone else!? Probably a nice fella, but boooooll-shiiiit. Sometimes I do think like that but if I was quoted as saying something like that I'd sound like an utter gobshite who thought he was mystical. So all I'm gonna say is, 'Just listen to the music.'"