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Faced with the staggering brilliance of a band like
The Coral at the Northampton Soundhaus, I suddenly wish I had never attempted to
become a ‘music journalist’, as I quaintly like to call
my role as sometime reviewer and music fan.“Three rules,”
I said to myself, when I got into this. “Never believe
the hype, avoid clichés like the plague, and trust no-one.”
I think I got the last one from a TV show, but it seems
as good a rule as any. One thing I never expected, despite
thoroughly preparing myself, was to be made speechless.
This was not in the rules. Music journalists are never
speechless; they have verbal diarrhoea, which they helpfully
disperse across page and screen in order to guide the
uneducated masses through the musical wilderness and
into the light…
Wrong again. That’s what Liverpool band, The Coral are
doing.
I should really quit while I’m ahead, but I won’t (What
can I say? Perhaps I do have verbal diarrhoea after
all). Anyone who tells you “they create their own world”
is wrong. They create galaxies, filled with dozens of
worlds, each with it’s own wildly orbiting planets and
stars exploding with the sheer force of quantum music
physics in action, rotating and held together by a powerful
gravitational force-field – the six weirdest individuals
on the British music scene.
I speak of prog-rock guitars, psychedelic keyboards,
blistering shouts and screams, Latino bass lines, thundering
drum beats and intensely emotional lyrics rearing from
the quietly impressive to the deeply disturbing.
Aged between eighteen and twenty-one, they play with
the skill and conviction of seasoned pros. Fellow Scouse
upstarts The Music couldn’t make this NME 5.0 show,
but perhaps it’s for the best. If they’re as good as
people say they are (Never believe the hype!), it would
really be too much, too soon.
It takes a whole lot of acclimatising to The Coral before
they sit comfortably. By ‘acclimatising’, I mean laughing
– at their kookiness, their audacity, their other-worldliness…It
just makes the heart glad. (Avoid clichés! Oh dear,
it’s going well…) Certainly coffee-table standards Goldrush
didn’t prepare us for the apocalyptic onset with their
Coldplay-with-an-edge standards.
The Hoken Clone stepped closer and confirmed that something
truly exceptional must be going on Merseyside, armed
with acoustic guitars and a barrage of deep-south blues,
exquisitely played. We are transported across the Atlantic
to the rain-soaked porch of an ancient black guy chewing
tobacco and singing the blues as he watches the Mississippi
meander away before him…
Even their fine performance pales in comparison to the
unique experience that is The Coral. As an eclectic
bunch of hugely entertaining lunatics, you don’t get
much better than this. Go see, and put me out of my
inadequately articulate misery… I trust you to value
them accordingly by telling everyone you meet of their
genius (Trust no-one – damn! I’m giving up now…)
Natasha House for Crud Magazine© 2002
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| 04/02 1 Giant Leap - My Culture
04/02 Elfpower Interview - Andrew Rieger - Creatures
04/02 Frou Frou Interview - Guy Sigsworth/Imogen Heap
04/02 Gomez Interview - Ian Ball
04/02 Idlewild - Live - London Astoria
04/02 K's Choice Interview
04/02 Leaves - Live - Camden Dingwall
04/02 Longwave Interview - Exit
04/02 Lucy Mongrel Interview
04/02 Oasis - The Hindu Times
04/02 Phantom Planet - Interview
04/02 Unwritten Law - Interview
04/02 VUE - Coordinates Interview
05/02 BRMC - LIve - Kentish Town, London
05/02 Breeders - Title K
05/02 FC Kahuna - Machine Says Yes
05/02 Moco - Live - London Monarch
05/02 Need New Body - Interview
05/02 The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Live - Soundhause, Northampton
05/02 The Bellrays - Meet The Bellrays
06/02 Fleadh Festival - Finsbury Park
06/02 Frou Frou Coordinates Interview
06/02 Incubus - Interview - Mark Einziger
06/02 North Mississippi Allstars - Interview
06/02 Papa Roach - She Loves Me Not
06/02 Proud Mary - Live - Northampton, Soundhaus
06/02 Pulp - Live - Sherwood Pines, Edwinstowe
06/02 Reindeer section - You Are My Joy
06/02 Silverchair - Diorama
|  | 06/02 Something Corporate - Leaving Through The Window
06/02 Soinc Youth - Interview
06/02 The Burn - The Smiling Face
06/02 The Coral - Live - Roadmender, Northampton
06/02 The LIbertines - Live - The Social, Nottingham
06/02 The Vines, Sheffield Leadmill
06/02 Trik Turner - Interview
06/02 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Live, Soundhaus, Northampton
07/02 12 Stones Interview
07/02 Arolo -Interview
07/02 Buy To Let Doncaster - Anti Social Behaviour
07/02 Cassius - Interview
07/02 Farrah - Interview
07/02 Glassjaw - Interview
07/02 Neil Michael Haggerty - Interview
07/02 Hoobastank - Running Away
07/02 Leaves - Interview
07/02 LL Cool Jay Interview
07/02 Oasis - Live - Finsbury Park, London
07/02 Polyphonic Spree - Live - Camden Monarch
07/02 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
07/02 Super Furry Animals - Interview
07/02 The Beatings - Live - Metro Club London
07/02 The Bellrays + The D4 - Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street London
January 2001
July - August 2001
September - October 2001
November - December 2001
January - March 2002
April - July 2002
August - December 2002 | |
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