THE CORAL | INTERVIEW
This summer will mark 20 years since the debut single by Liverpudlian jangle-dreamers The Coral. Time then, in rock cliché fashion, to retire to their own private island. However, as Carl Marsh finds out from keyboard tinkler Nick Power, Coral Island is not all you might expect…
Your new double album, Coral Island, mashes influences from your earlier stuff into a fairground-themed record. There are so many tracks, but one stands out for me – Change Your Mind, which is perhaps as hooky as some of your earlier hits?
Nick Power: Yeah. It’s one of those tunes where you get a foundation song like that and think, “we can go into some weirder bits and stuff that we haven’t done before.” Once you get a better hook like that, it gives you breathing space because you’ve got the single and all that.
With other tracks on the album, you’ve got stripped-down indie-pop and spooky folk-type stuff. On specific albums in the past, you’ve gone down different paths of musical exploration. Is that why you wanted to bring a bit of everything you’ve previously done to this record?
I think so. It’s meant to be Coral Island – why not have all the things that we love? Maybe it’s a sort of Pandora’s box of all the things we like and all the sides to us. [Going to assume this is a misused idiom rather than a warning that the album will curse anyone who listens to it – Greek mythology ed] And because it’s a double, and it’s called Coral Island, we’ve indulged in that a bit – it’s something you can really get your teeth into and let your imagination run with it.
I thought that might be the case, but obviously your words mean more than mine when describing the album. It sounds like it was a fully involved production by all the band?
We did a thing where it was like, everyone brings a song – at least a song – and everyone sings or writes one as well, which we’ve never done before. So in some respects it’s one of those tapestry albums, where you can just let it fly: get into it for like two hours. And then there’s a book with it. So it’s a wholly immersive world.
Who came up with the idea that to do that, you know: everyone brings something to the party?
It just happened as we were doing it. We had the idea to do Coral Island. We thought, let’s solidify the thing that we love. What do we love about music and cinema? And the thing that we do the best, probably, is pier towns because we live in the Northwest. You go on holiday to north Wales – Llandudno, Rhyl – and Blackpool. That’s what we thought holidays were: caravans, pier arcades, rides with no health and safety certificate.
But it’s really magical as well. If you’re a kid, everyone remembers the first fair you went to, because it’s such a knockout experience. Even though as an adult, you think “what the fuck!” You can learn everything about the world in one night! You’ll probably see a fight, a couple kissing, a couple arguing, an act of goodwill, and someone getting… you know, just everything. It’s like in this one magical dream/nightmare. So that’s what we thought we should solidify, because we’ve always toyed with it in albums and songs.
Have you had any recent times reliving your youth in any of those pier towns?
I still go back to north Wales. I love it. When we were bored in the middle of doing The Curse Of Love [2014], we just thought, “let’s go to Blackpool for the day”. It was the middle of winter, and we just got smashed and walked around all day [laughs]. It was one of my favourite days of being in the band – we’d listened to The Smiths on the way up. Morrissey paints that picture really well, you know, with Rusholme Ruffians and things like that. It’s the grey English seaside, but there’s a romance to it.
The Coral’s Coral Island is out now via Run On. Info: www.thecoral.co.uk
words CARL MARSH