Move Through The Dawn The Coral

• 1Eyes Like Pearls02:46
• 2Reaching Out For A Friend02:48
• 3Sweet Release02:50
• 4She's A Runaway03:27
• 5Strangers In The Hollow02:53
• 6Love Or Solution03:23
• 7Eyes Of The Moon02:47
• 8Undercover Of The Night03:03
• 9Outside My Window02:44
• 10Stormbreaker04:41
• 11After The Fair02:51
• Total Runtime34:13

Info for Move Through The Dawn

Move Through The Dawn is the second chapter in the story of The Coral Reborn. After 2010’s Butterfly House this beloved Wirral band, whose members apart from singer James Skelly went from being at school to being on tour with Oasis with hardly a moment to stop and think about what was happening, took a five-year break. That period was, as keyboardist Nick Power says, “Like going into Castle Greyskull. The outside world was a scary place.” But it was necessary. The Coral returned recharged with 2016’s psychedelic, riff-heavy Distance Inbetween. Now they have come back with an album filled with perfectly crafted songs: melodic, hopeful.

“We had pretty much written a whole other album in the style of the last one,” says James, on how Move Through The Dawn came to be. “Distance Inbetween was well received, and it would have been easy to go in and do the same thing again. Then we booked the studio and had a revelation: we had to go in the opposite direction. We had to write three minute songs, all the fat trimmed off, hardly any solos. I mean, I like the War on Drugs and the Arcade Fire. But does your shortest track have to be over five minutes long? It seemed that three minute songs had become unfashionable in guitar music and they needed reviving.”

The Coral have made a case for the perfect melody, aligned with lyrics that take a deep look at the way we live now while hoping for a better tomorrow. From the beautifully romantic Eyes Like Pearls to the garage punk charge of Sweet Release to the tender folk guitar picking of After The Fair, this is an album on which every song counts. It is also, in true Coral fashion, eccentric. It is informed by 60s and 70s music but hardly beholden to it, and very much with its own character. Eyes Of The Moon has an eerie, early British rock’n’roll feel, like something Joe Meek might have come up with. Outside My Window has shades of the Yardbirds and Del Shannon. These are not references typically found in guitar bands in 2018.

“We live by the sea,” explains Nick, on The Coral’s otherness. “When you go to New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula you hear Del Shannon’s Runaway in the arcade, or on the waltzer. I went the other day and they were playing Floyd’s Comfortably Numb and Break On Through by The Doors. It’s a great timewarp to be in. People do grow up on Love, Captain Beefheart and Floyd up here, which might have something to do with people congregating in bedrooms, smoking weed and doing acid. Liverpool is not affected by fashions and as a result it has its own roots music, its own jingle-jangle quality. I used to think of Merseybeat as a swearword but I like it now. And we’re all still in The Wirral — I live on the road behind James, Paul is behind that, and Ian is up the road — so we’re pretty tight-knit. We haven’t bought mansions in LA. Not that anyone has offered them. I think you hear that in the music.”

Even tight-knit groups need a break from each other once in a while. Starting out in 1996 as kids jamming in the basement of Flat Foot Sams pub in Hoylake, James, Nick, drummer Ian Skelly, bassist Paul Duffy and guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones — only 13 when he joined — were thrown in at the deep end in 2002 when their debut album went to number five. From then until their self-imposed hiatus in 2010, interspersed by Bill leaving in 2008 to pursue his own career, they barely stopped. ...

The Coral

The Coral
The Coral’s past speaks volumes having sold over a million UK albums since their debut EP release in 2001, five of those hitting the top ten, including the chart-topping Magic and Medicine (2003) and eight top 40 singles. Without so much as a glance over their shoulder, James Skelly (vocals/guitars), Ian Skelly (drums/percussion/vocals), Nick Power (keyboard/vocals), Paul Duffy (bass/keyboards/vocals) and Paul Molloy (guitars) stride into the future to fortify their indefinable position in modern music. There are no full stops in The Coral’s story, but their return with a seventh album, Distance Inbetween in 2016 turns a distinct new page within it after an unapologetic five year hiatus. Picking up the band’s story from the release of 2010’s Butterfly House, theirs is a tale of uninterrupted individual creativity punctuated by the surprise release of their lost album, The Curse of Love (2014).

A collective for whom permanence is defined by bonds stronger than music, The Coral encouraged each other to go exploring alone after a relentless decade of activity. James Skelly wrote and recorded Love Undercover (2013), establishing his Skeleton Key record label and producing songs for bands including Blossoms, Sundowners and She Drew The Gun. Nick Power revealed literary talents with a book called Small Town Chase (2013); Ian Skelly found a kindred spirit in Paul Molloy (formerly of The Zutons) forming Serpent Power and Paul Duffy turned to soundtrack composition. Founding member, Lee Southall continues his own personal and artistic journeys separately while The Coral regroup, leaving his foot in the door for when his ambitions have been fulfilled elsewhere.

Of the break and return, James Skelly says: "We decided the band had hit a brick wall. We had to stop and take a breath. We had been doing the same thing of touring, doing an album and then touring again for twelve years and it had become a habit everyone was scared to step away from. Looking back now, from the point of view of a reinvigorated band, it was the best decision we could have made."

The rumour of a heavier album by The Coral has now become an irrefutable reality. Recorded live and mostly in just one take, the seams of each of the 12-tracks are purposely rough-hewn and pave the way for a new wave of visceral onstage performances by the reenergised band. Straddling digital and analogue worlds, many songs on Distance Inbetween developed through texts and emails between James Skelly and Power. Its unforced development influenced equally by the nature of modern communication, their shared artistic desires and love for the static of rediscovered cassette tapes. Using the experience of compiling The Curse of Love as a catalyst for new material, today’s The Coral is one of musical minimalism, drawing the rhythm section out of the shadows, putting emphasis on the importance of ideas and words over instrumentation.

James Skelly expands on the origins of the album, saying: "Before we started making the album we had discussed that we wanted it to be more minimal and rhythmical, with less chords. We came from a starting point of having only me on guitar, so we thought logically about how we could turn a potential weakness into an advantage. So, we thought if you've got a rhythm section that’s been playing together for almost twenty years, why not make that the centre of the songs?"

Following lyrical themes that question reality, the band ferments a climate in which it’s possible for influences like David Lynch to sit alongside Hawkwind and Public Enemy. Listeners are invited into The Coral’s world of Richard Yates books, Alan Moore comics, 1980's toys, the sound of krautrock compilations and Muddy Waters’ Electric Mud, as well as hours spent staring into the bleak beauty of Gregory Crewdson’s photography. It’s a rule that a book’s cover only hints at its content, but a glance at the monochrome artwork of Distance Inbetween speaks a thousand words for what lies within. As black and white birds circle each other in perpetuity above an ominous void, the band are photographed as shamanistic explorers of no known place in time or space.

Connector opens the album, a driving beat set to a looping guitar riff, cut through with mellotron strings. Skelly’s vocal echoes as if cast from a pulpit, calling on himself and his congregation to accept the consequences of their actions. Chasing The Tail Of A Dream throws shards of reverb-laden guitar and keys into almost four minutes of pulsing, rhythmical soundscape, the lyrics questioning our human fallibility when faced with irresistible fantasies.

Distance Inbetween, the title track, pulls away into space of its own finding the singer in relative solitude with Nick Power’s piano a faithful companion, speaking with brutal honestly of love and the walls that matters of the heart can easily build around us. Skelly’s studied serenade, a notable counterpoint to the asphalt-throated pinnacles he finds when volume counts, recalls the restrained modern classicism of Sinatra and dusky depths of Nick Cave. Million Eyes surfs a growing tide of instrumentation and layers of vocal harmony, before stopping the tape and tacking into a rhythmic jam. Holding dear the virtues of freedom of expression, especially the tradition of letting their guitarists cut loose, Paul Molloy’s fingers go for a walk in a frenzied, improvised solo.

James Skelly recalls the session, saying: "Paul was playing with Ian in their band, Serpent Power and we'd all been mates with him for years. We already had a couple of tunes recorded and Ian suggested Paul add some guitar. His parts really enhanced the tracks; he understood where he needed to leave space. From that point we didn't look back. We had a full line-up and were confident we could make an album that would stand next to the others."

Fear Machine finds Skelly in subversive mood. With concealed venom he decries the manipulation of mass public perception by using fear to instil control, while elsewhere on the album he urges himself not to fall prey to those unspoken and unseen forces. Holy Revelation tells of a blissful awakening to these dynamics, releasing himself from the clutches of control with emphatic defiance as crying strings and throbbing guitars snake through tumbling rhythms that tip a high-hat to Cream and White Album Beatles. A two minute, ethereal soundscape written by Nick Power titled End Credits brings the curtain down, signalling the end of another wide-screen adventure with The Coral

Distance Inbetween was recorded at Parr Street Studio in Liverpool with co-producer Richard Turvey, a thrilling new talent and wide-eyed emergent master of studio techniques, within whom The Coral found a trusted and fearless collaborator. Additional sounds were laid down at the Coral Caves that reside at an undisclosed location beside the Mersey, with the album also featuring contributions from Alfie Skelly (bow on She Runs The River). The album is dedicated to Alan Wills, the band’s early mentor and Deltasonic label boss, who lost his life just months prior to the recording of the record in 2014. (Rob Allen)

This album contains no booklet.