They don't like touring. They don't do award shows. Liverpool's The Coral talk to Brian Boyd about doing it their way
All you ever seem to hear about The Coral is how they used to work in burger vans before they formed their band, how they don't like touring abroad because they can't get beans on toast, how they don't like anything even remotely connected with the music industry, and how they just want to be left alone in Liverpool to dream up more of their big-selling, critically acclaimed psychedelic-tinged rock.
"It's because we have no image, we've been given one," says Nick Power from the band. "The fact that we don't turn up at music awards ceremonies when we've been nominated for these big prizes [the Mercury, the Brits] might have something to do with it also. Other bands spend their time kissing MTV's arse. We just don't trust anyone in the music industry."
Their "innocent kids" image wasn't helped when, in lieu of appearing at the Mercury Music Awards, they sent a video from Liverpool, which featured a Freddie Mercury lookalike. "That was so embarrassing," says Power. "We didn't realise that the Mercury prize has nothing to do with Freddie Mercury!" For a band still in their early 20s, and five years younger than the members of Franz Ferdinand, The Coral have an impressive catalogue. Their eponymous debut was released in 2002 (one of the singles from it, Dreaming Of You, was later memorably, or maybe not, covered by Joe Dolan). Their second album, Magic And Medicine, was released within 12 months of the first, and kept up the momentum with more hit singles and more hit tours.
To put this in perspective, most bands have a minimum of two (and usually three) years between albums, but just six months after Magic And Medicine, the industrious Coral were back again with another album, Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker. "We got a bit of a lashing for that," says Power. "We just didn't know that you weren't supposed to be so quick, and it drove the record company insane as they would have preferred us to still be promoting the first album, never mind actually releasing a third one. The thing about Nightfreak is that it wasn't supposed to be a proper album, it was only supposed to be an EP, but we just threw some more songs on to it. A few of the reviews were a bit iffy, but we put it out as a "mood EP" - just a bunch of songs we had been working on, before releasing the third album proper. I think maybe we did overexpose ourselves, but there's nothing else for us to do in Liverpool. We're not part of that industry bubble. We just spend our time looking out at the Irish Sea and coming up with songs."
The fourth (or third, if you prefer) Coral album, Invisible Invasion, hits the shops next Friday, preceded by the catchy current single, In The Morning.
"This record is all the best bits of all our previous albums rolled into one," says Power. "This is made to be played live. Magic And Medicine now sounds like a real studio album but with this one the songs have a lot more treble on them and sound warmer."
IN ONE OF the most bizarre artist/producer link-ups of recent years, the band got Portishead in to produce Invisible Invasion. Portishead would appear to have nothing in common with The Coral. The former do an eerie, beats-laden, slow-moving trip-hop sound, while the latter are a jumpy guitar band.
"It does seem mad," says Power. "But we're huge Portishead fans. It never occurred to us to ask them to produce it but somehow word got back to us that they were big fans of ours. I think they like us because they're underdogs too. They keep to themselves and just do the music. They had loads of amazing ideas and honestly, this was the easiest album for us to record. They're still working on their new album, so I think working with us might have given them a lesson in how to get your album out quicker. We did ask them to play us some of their new stuff and it is going to be amazing."
The remarkable thing about Invisible Invasion is that you wouldn't know it was produced by a famous trip-hop act unless you were told. There's no veering into strange, dense-beats territory, but the production does seem to contain a few more nuances than previous Coral albums.
"The way we work is we go in six-month cycles," says Power. "We don't want to be living off our old stuff, so getting these new songs out was important to us. In terms of influences, we were listening to a lot of Dr Dre, Can, the Velvets, Beefheart, The Supremes and Neil Young when recording this album. Not that any of it shows."
The band have no plans to slow down. "We will tour this album, perhaps for longer than we've toured before. The thing about touring for us though is that we really like it at the start, when it's all a novelty, but then it gets like Groundhog Day. Record companies would like you to tour more. It's their way of controlling you, because usually, the more you tour, the more you sell of the album. Our way to get out of touring is to record a new album."
OVER THE PAST year the band have watched as their neighbours and close friends, The Zutons, have threatened to steal their "maverick young Liverpool musicians" crown. The Zutons's debut album has made the same sort of commercial and critical dent as The Coral's debut.
"You get people talking about how this is the Scouse equivalent of Blur versus Oasis and stuff like that" says Power. "It's nothing like that at all. It's more like Echo and The Bunnymen versuss The Teardrop Explodes. But there is no scrabbling for more fame from either us or the Zutons. I know it sounds like a terrible cliche but we're here for the music, not the award shows. We do listen to our manager and we do listen to our record company, but we go our own way in the end. We're The Coral, that's all we can do."
The Coral's In The Moining single is out now. Invisible Invasion is released next Friday on Deltasonic