Last week, we published an exclusive interview with The Coral about their new album Move Through The Dawn. The album’s a remarkable piece of work: 11-lean songs all clocking in and around the three minute mark. James Skelly told Gigwise he’d intentionally gone for a Tom Petty/Ray Davies thing “where each verse is phonetically the same and contains no throwaway or ad-lib in,” adding that “it's an ode to songwriting and melody”. Certainly, it’s a marked turn away from the kraut wig-outs of the 2015 album Distance Inbetween – but it still has plenty of vigour to cause a rabble-rousing stir when they hit the road later with it this year. From the garage rock of ‘Sweet Release’, to the more acoustic numbers, this album's a brilliant energy to it, and demands repeats listens. Lastly, though Skelly puts distance between himself and the pioneers of pop/rock songwriting, The Coral are in the same league as their heroes, whether they're keen to admit it or not
A band firing from all cylinders like this, however, don’t sound this great for no reason: the Wirral-based band have plumbed the depths of the human experience through art, literature and music - and have laid bare many of their best finds ever for Gigwise readers below. A notepad, a decent internet connection – and if you’re feeling flush a trip to the shops – is recommended to devour the hot tips below. There’s absolute gems: from the latest Arctic Monkeys and Paris, Texas, to their favourite Beach Boys and Neil Young - there's loads of great stuff to get into.
Gigwise: What music have you heard recently that you’d recommend?
James Skelly: Josh T Pearson’s last album The Straight Hits. I love how throwaway it is in these times. I love the way he just doesn’t give a fuck. Most people pretend to not give a fuck.
GW: He’s got a brilliant older song that's really long. What’s that song again?
JS: ‘Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ’. That is one of the best songs I ever heard in my life! It’s like 13 minutes and the lyrics in it are unbelievable.
JS: I like Paul McCartney’s new tune ‘Come On To Me’. It’s so simple and direct and I think people don’t understand how hard that is to do. The last Killers album Wonderful Wonderful is just unbelievable. I just like the Biblical apocalyptic thing of it. I think it’s quite deep.
Nick Power: Jim James - ‘Just A Fool’ is a class tune. The production is great. And I like that Amen Dunes one about the Miki Dora. Dora's an old mythical surfer who changed the game of surfing, but he was crazy and threw it all away.
JS: I like the fact Arctic Monkeys have done that album. It’s flawed. Some songs are really good, and some you think they could have worked on more. But at least it’s interesting. It’s bizarre that they’ve done that. So even if you’re thinking, 'is that bad or is that good?' at least it’s interesting, which I kind of need in music.
GW: What classic albums do you always go back to?
JS: Today by The Beach Boys. It came out just before Pet Sounds and it’s got the energy of the early stuff with the sophistication of Pet Sounds. In those days, side one was all your bangers and side two was when you’d do the deeper ones. The side two of it is just incredible. Especailly ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ and ‘In The Back Of My Mind’.
NP: Tonight's The Night by Neil Young. It’s like ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ by The Beatles (probably my favourite Beatles tune). It reminds me of it because of the desperation in it I think. It’s like it’s on the edge of falling apart.
GW: It seems you like some good country music?
NP: Yeah, there’s something in country. It’s a good way of putting sadness across.
JS: It’s from you heart as you can tell what they sung, is how it ended up. They’re naturally poetic.
NP: It’s making the beauty out of the mundane. There’s loads of art in it. Have you seen that film The Last Picture Show? It distils that feeling really well.
JS: And the Phil Spector produced album by Dion, Born To Be With You. I always go back to that. I love it more now than I ever have. There’s a rage in his music that you can connect to. You get it with opera and classical music, but no one else has got in pop music. It’s the deepest. It’s like the rage of the big bang. No one else has got that.
NP: Scorsese summed it up really well: it’s sensitive music, but it’s street music. You know, the way Bob Marley and The Wailers were singing about love, but it’s tough music. I quite like that in music.
GW: Phil Spector is a bit overlooked now.
NP: Yeah he is because he was in jail for murder.
JS: You reap what you sow don’t you. But can you separate the art from the artist? That’s the question. I can, some people can’t.
GW: What films would you recommend?
JS: An Italian film called The Great Beauty. I still don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t help watching it. I didn’t expect it in these times where everything’s so quick. With this film, every shot could be a painting. There isn’t really a moral to it. You’d have to watch it really. But I like stuff that’s interesting that I can’t figure out sometimes.
NP: Paris, Texas is a big favourite of the band. Any Wim Wenders I’m all over and here he collaborates with screenplay writer Sam Shepherd (The Right Stuff, Mud, and Days In Heaven) who we’re both into. It’s quite an existentialist film, Paris, Texas, because you don’t know why he’s lost his mind, do you? You never find out - or you do kind of in the end, but he’s just a wandering soul isn’t he? It’s almost like the old kung fu movies where he’s trying to find the purpose of it.
JS: Mean Streets is the coolest film ever but it’s so low budget, so raw. I think it was the first time anyone had used music like that in a film. It was all score before. Or maybe Easy Rider was the first? Easy Rider is a big one for us. We re-made it Lazy Rider. We made it on BMX’s when we were kids.
NP: We made loads of b-movies as kids.
GW: Did you ever do a Jackass one?
NP: No, it was pre-Jackass, we were doing that before Jackass.
JS: But without the danger. It was safe. We had helmets on.
NP: My brother ran through a graveyard naked with an American flag behind him. That was the Easy Rider acid scene.
GW: What books would you recommend Gigwise readers check out?
JS: Rock Springs by Richard Ford. That’s a good one about working class America. Realism they call it, but now I’d call that escapism. Blade Runner is probably more real now. Anyway, it’s a lot of short stories that interconnect. The way he writes is brilliant. Springsteen was definitely influenced by it, or he was influenced by Springsteen. Probably both.
NP: Another good one is a biography about Ned Kelly called True History of the Kelly Gang. He was Australia's most notorious outlaw, a convict from Ireland. The book’s based on his his diaries, his life story. He was illiterate – there’s no punctuation or anything – yet naturally poetic, and I like that in an author.
JS: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates could be my favourite book ever. It’s 11 short stories and it’s just… he’s deep. He sort of taps into the most brutal stuff in the most mundane, kitchen sink way. There’s one he does one where the lad goes to war but he doesn’t kill anyone so in his mind he doesn’t get to come home as a hero. And there’s another lad who doesn’t kill someone and it all builds up to this big fight they have. That’s in another book, but that’s the type of thing he writes. They’re all short. He’s the only person I’ve read every book of. It’s really heavy stuff.
GW: Nice one. Thanks for the recommendations.
