Thoughts of a holiday somewhere more temperate continue to be dashed by that damn coronavirus and the convoluted rules restricting anyone from sensibly booking a holiday for fear of not being let back in. In fact, for the second year running, a holiday somewhere involving my dust-collecting passport seems as far away as ever. Couple all this with the fact that, post-foot surgery, I’m confined to the sofa, effectively still under lockdown, despite pubs, shops, swimming pools and all the rest being open again. I have never been in greater desperate need of escape.
Relief is at hand, thankfully, in the form of Coral Island, the bright, sparkling, nostalgia-laden trip back in time from The Coral. Drawing unashamedly from the same palette that decorated Crosby, Stills and Nash at their most whimsical (Our House), the Small Faces’ semi-psychedelic Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake or even, at an aural squint, The Beatles’ Penny Lane, Coral Island takes a thematic trip to an imaginary seaside resort, replete with funfair rides and, generally speaking, a carefree, jolly day out for everyone. And it is utterly delightful.
It is also highly ambitious, at 24 tracks long - an unashamed double concept album in old money, not that you’ll have much issue with the length, the ambition or the music. Ah, the concept album: while the likes of Pink Floyd’s The Wall or The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis might be the examples cited by critics of the form, it shouldn’t be forgotten that many’s the record with a narrative thread running right through it. Pet Sounds, London Calling, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - the list of classics is endless, but the genre hasn’t been totally consigned to the heritage trail. So why now? ‘Why not?’, say The Coral, happy to challenge conventions by putting out a double-concept in the age of pic’n’mix streaming and audience attention spans apparently unwilling to commit to anything more than individual songs, rather than sustained album consumption, and certainly not a collection of almost an hour’s worth of material.
Radical as that might sound, there is some unwitting logic behind it. The audience is both captive right now but also desperate for escapism, and what better route out of COVID confinement than an album of such joyous sentimentality as Coral Island. Over its two discs, the album captures the two sides of a seaside resort: the boisterous summer months of excited children, organ music and ice cream, and then the downbeat winter period, with the fairground rides covered up and just the sound of seagulls piercing the tourist-free air. It’s theatre of the mind, to some extent, with the music driving the mood and frontman James Skelly’s 85-year-old grandfather providing spoken interludes in much the same manner as Stanley Unwin did on the aforementioned Small Faces opus.
So, what makes it such a pleasing excursion? Coral Island is gentle theatre, all acoustic guitars and blended harmonies, giving it a folky feel without descending into the faux street busking of the Mumford clan. More importantly, it’s the combination of the music and the lyrical scene-painting that makes it so enjoyable, whether the melancholia of Summertime reflecting on fairground arcades, or Mist On The River evoking teenage frustrations of summer love going unrequited. Old Photographs blatantly breaks out the Werther’s Originals for a sepia-tinged vignette of yesterday, while Autumn Has Come almost celebrates the end of the summer season that Take Me Back To The Summertime harks after.
I sincerely hope that I get a summer holiday this year and, in particular, get to see somewhere with azure seas and sandy beaches. That, you can safely conclude, is not going to be on these shores, not even Cornwall. But as over-privileged a statement as that is, you could do worse than to take a trip to Coral Island, to escape to a place that does still exist, and does still fulfil its purpose. The Coral may be tapping into childhoods lost (or, simply imagined), but after the year we’ve all had, they’ve delivered a delightful break from reality.
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