Don't Say Goodbye

A month ago I wrote a couple of posts about a pile of CD singles found in a box while looking for something else (last weekend while digging through a different box of CDs I found my copy of Spiritualized's Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space, the CD version with the blister pack which I've been looking for since their gig at New Century Hall last September. Maybe I need to rationalise/ reorganise my CDs and their storage). Two of the CD singles from the first box were an Elliott Smith single from 2002 (Son Of Sam) and an EP from The Coral, same year, Skeleton Key (complete with sticker, still currently unstuck). Along with Skeleton Key was another single from the Wirral band, Goodbye. 

Goodbye is a fantastic song, four minutes of 60s psyche rock re- dug for the early 21st century, led by a piercing guitar line, some classic minor and major chords and singer James Skelley's old before his years voice. It's The Thirteenth Floor Elevators and The Byrds transported through time and space to West Kirby. The breakdown in the middle, thundering guitars and drums, sudden increase in tempo and wig out are all superb, especially when you consider some of this band were barely out of their teens at the time (Ian Broudie was producer but the band seem to have had a clear idea of how they wanted to sound). Goodbye also has a countdown section, a heavily reverbed vocal countdown from ten down to one, backed by muffled organ and guitars- countdowns always make songs better. 

Goodbye

Goodbye was always one of the standouts from The Coral's debut album and it's no wonder they released it as the album's second single. Somehow the intervening twenty two years have made the song sound even better than it did back in 2002. 

This CD single was an Enhanced CD. Not only did it have two B- sides but if you popped it into your computer you could watch the video, in those pre- Youtube days an exciting thing. The video is a fantastic promo for the song, the band shot at night in North Wales, opposite the Wirral peninsula, with some Wicker Man shenanigans taking place. 

These were the B-sides...

Good Fortune

Good Fortune is two and a half minutes of acoustic guitar, buzzsaw guitar, 60s melodies and cosmic scouse energy. The fact they put this on the B-side of a single shows how strong the group's writing was at the time and how soon they hit their stride.

Travelling Circus

Travelling Circus, fairground guitar and organ lines, breaks down for a question and answer section- 'what shall we do with the foolish people? Hang them from the church's steeple!'- before zipping back into its 60s psyche/ fairground crossover ground. 

My CD was CD 1. There was a CD 2 which I don't have, which had two live in session songs (Goodbye and Dressed Like A Cow, from a session at XFM) and The Coral Mini Movie, a ten minute tour documentary from 2002, a fairly unfiltered view of the group on tour, some fun in a children's play centre, and the world they were creating and inhabiting at the time. 

Skeleton Key

Another of the CD singles recently discovered in a neglected corner of my CD collection is one of the earliest releases by a bunch of teenagers from Wirral, The Coral. Skeleton Key came out in 2002, a four track EP with a couple of bonus features to attract the singles buyer- a sticker (still inside the case) and the video for the title track which you could watch if you had a computer in 2002 (I didn't). The band, six still very young men from Hoylake, had a basket full of cosmic scouse influences and soon they were exposed to manager Alan Wills' record collection, bringing music by Can, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Kraftwerk into their earshot (Wills had formerly drummed for Shack). Skeleton Key, the EPs title track was considered a turning point for the band in songwriting terms, a breakthrough.

Nothing really prepares you for putting the Skeleton Key CD into the CD player and clicking play. The music is a ramshackle burst of electric guitar, rapid fire rhythms and bawled vocals, sea shanty and pirate lyrics, shipwrecks and rocks. 'Will I ever return? Will I ever get back?', James Skelly asks as the guitars, somewhere between The 13th Floor Elevators and early Pink Floyd, fire off.  There's a slow down with a xylophone part and then some manic shouting and playing, followed by the weird ending, voices and a completely different song. Most of the band were only 19 or 20 at this point, guitarist Bill Ryder- Jones even younger. This was not the sort of music most late teenagers would be making in the early 21st century. Everyone else was into The Strokes. The Coral were taking a hectic neo- psychedelic/ folk music/ spaghetti Western hybrid into the world. 

Skeleton Key

Dressed Like A Cow is no less unhinged, a tad more conventional maybe, with some 60s songwriting at its centre. 'Well I went to a movie with a girl last night/ Dressed like a cow but she looked so fine', are the opening lines. Meanwhile the song lurches around with strange time signature changes, abrupt turns and notes screaming from the top of the fretboard and from the keys. It ends in an explosion. 

Dressed Like A Cow

Things calm down on song three, Darkness, which starts out with harmonica and sweet singing, echoes of Dylan in 1968, and some lovely guitar playing. 

Darkness

Sheriff John Brown closes the EP, a six minute Americana/ blues via the Wirral peninsula epic, the guitars, organ and voice sounding like The Animals (not a popular or even niche influence in 2002). The lyrics tell a tale of authority, corruption and injustice. Sheriff John Brown, song four on a four song EP, struck a chord with fans and the band played it often live thereafter. 

Sheriff John Brown

Of these four songs Skeleton Key turned up on their debut album, released in July 2002 and produced by Ian Broudie. My CD single has not just the sticker still inside it but the postcard to send off to an address in Leamington Spa to get news and info about the band. I'm guessing its a bit late to do that now. I still can't decide where to put the sticker either. 

Ocean's Apart

More music in the cosmic scouse lineage today, following yesterday's Mick Head songs and a connection to Mick's producer Bill Ryder- Jones, ex- guitarist with today's psychedelic Wirral bunch The Coral. I came  across this song elsewhere and recalled reading a review of The Coral's album, released back in September- Sea Of Mirrors. The reviews had been really positive and the interview I read in early autumn left me making a mental note to check out Sea Of mirrors and its vinyl only counterpart Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show. For whatever reason I didn't do the checking out and The Coral's latest albums slipped off my list until Sunday when I heard this...

Ocean's Apart

The album was billed as the imaginary soundtrack to a lost spaghetti Western film, Ennio Morricone, dreamy Wirral country rock and psychedelia stirred into one pot. Ocean's Apart pretty much fulfills that description with the addition of Cillian Murphy turning up at the end of the song for a spoken word section, and has left me wanting to dig deep into the rest of the album. 

Browsing my music folders I then found another recent Coral song, one called Faceless Angel, a song I don't believe I'd heard until I started writing this post. Faceless Angel came out in April 2021, the lead single ahead of their then new album Coral Island, an album I failed to investigate back in 2021 despite (once again) positive reviews that left me thinking it sounded really interesting and right up my street. This one has skiffle-y railway rhythms, reverb drenched vocals and sweeping strings.

Faceless Angel

All of which leaves me with three Coral albums to get into, two from this year and a double from two years ago. I have some of their earlier stuff, the Skeleton Key EP from 2002 and their self titled debut from the same year, Magic And Medicine and I think  2004's The Invisible Invasion (produced by Portishead) and a couple of singles. And then nothing until all of this. This is the first time I've posted anything by them here too.