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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Dave Simpson

The Coral: Sea of Mirrors review – their best album since their debut

The Coral band
‘Surreal Italian spaghetti western soundtrack’ … the Coral. Photograph: John Johnson

After 20 years in the game, the Coral have been on a creative roll since their 2021 double album Coral Island, based upon a concept of a fictional seaside town but inspired by real life Blackpool. This time, the Wirral band’s even better follow-up – released in conjunction with a vinyl-only album, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show – was conceived as a “surreal Italian spaghetti western soundtrack,” but the songs contain all manner of metaphors and allegories for crumbling modern Britain.

The artwork for Sea of Mirrors.
The artwork for Sea of Mirrors Photograph: Publicity image

The magical Wild Bird – inspired when singer-songwriter James Skelly watched a gull fly over the rooftops – alludes to the loss and cost of freedom. The darkly evocative Oceans Apart – where Nick Power’s storytelling words are superbly narrated by Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy – is partly an essay on division. The songs are routinely populated by drifters, dreamers and others left behind by society.

The deeper meanings are there if you want them – but if not there are the 13 tunes, gently lysergic, twang-laden folk-rock beautifully decorated with Sean O’Hagan’s inventive string arrangements. Original guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones crops up in the credits of the Doors-y title track. References to nature and seafaring abound in the likes of North Wind or Cycles of the Seasons. Faraway Worlds – inspired by the places we can go in our imagination – is a beautiful, late Beach Boys-type dreamscape. It all adds up to quite a voyage: the Merseysiders’ most fully realised set of songs since their debut.

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