The opening is quite noisy, so it's tough to tell what The Coral will be right off the bat. When the vocals pick up, there's at least 2 voices over dubbed, probably more. The highest voice sounds a bit like Steven Tyler, but that might just be due to the mixing. The Coral feel like a lighter version of Drop Kick Murphies. They play a rough form of bluesy punk with a touch of anger. Instead of horns and Celtic instruments, The Coral use a touch of reggae in the form of an organ and a guitar strumming the off beats. The first four make that five songs are played in haunting minor keys. This makes the organ sound really depressing.
"Goodbye" is the first song on the album that doesn't sound sad. The song almost sounds like it would fit really well on My Generation or another Kinks imitator from that era. It still sounds a bit dark, like the key is right on the edge between major and minor, and the band is this close to tipping over the edge because they don't know quite how to sing a happy song. I feel this is confirmed by the very next song, that goes right back into being sad. Even a song like "Skeleton Key" which is clearly meant to be some sort of hard pirate rock winds up sounding pretty soft and sad when played by The Coral. It might have something to do with the instrumental passage that features a xylophone.
The Coral superficially reminds me of another dark and sad band I've lamented about twice before, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The Coral are much better, but in both cases I felt the bands were obsessed with sad or dark melodies and settled into a depressing repetition of musical themes. But apparently they made a huge splash with this debut album, with one reviewer claiming, "Not since the Beatles ... has a young band from England's blustery western coast caused this much commotion." Somehow I've never heard of The Coral, and I doubt you have either.
I know quotes with ellipses usually mean the quote has been edited to be more ridiculous, but in this case it's the opposite. The full quote is, "Not since the Beatles, or perhaps even Echo & the Bunnymen, has a young band from England's blustery western coast caused this much commotion." The way it's worded it sounds like Echo & the Bunnymen made a bigger splash than the Beatles, which is certainly not true, seeing as how almost no one knows who the fuck they are anymore, but everyone knows the Beatles.
As for The Coral, I didn't even know they existed before this review, so it looks like the commotion they caused didn't last. 2 stars.
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