Pirates of pop

The Coral can do pop, they can do folk, blues, psychedelia, bluegrass, sea-shanties - sometimes all at once - and now they're…

The Coral can do pop, they can do folk, blues, psychedelia, bluegrass, sea-shanties - sometimes all at once - and now they're ready to take on the world, writes Brian Boyd.

When The Coral's début album was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize last year, the young Liverpool six-piece decided they "couldn't be arsed" attending the glitzy London awards ceremony. "But it's the Mercury, you have to show up," argued their exasperated record company.

The teenagers stood their stubborn ground though and only after extreme amounts of pressure were they convinced to film a short video explaining their absence. On the night, and in front of the good, bad and ugly of the British music industry, The Coral's brief video featured some members of the band dressed up as Freddie Mercury - the band believing in all their youthful innocence that the award was named after the Queen singer.

"Oh God, it was so embarrassing," remembers lead singer and chief songwriter James Skelly. "We didn't know the award had nothing at all to do with Freddie Mercury, we felt really stupid afterwards when it was pointed out to us."

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For many, The Coral were robbed of last year's Mercury (they lost out to Ms. Dynamite) given that their album was critically regarded as the release of the year.

All school friends from the Hoylake area of Liverpool, what startled most about their arrival on the music scene was their sheer knowledge of rock's back pages and their giddy eclecticism.

While other bands in their late teens plod along in a banal post-Oasis fashion, The Coral were extraordinarily inventive - the first album found them singing about the Spanish Main and pirates over a musical base of sea shanties, ska rhythms and psychedelia.

"That's what happens when you smoke too much dope and spend too much time staring out at the Irish Sea," notes Skelly. "People keep going on about how strange we sound and how different we are but to us it's not an issue. I think growing up in a small place like Hoylake means that you're not going to be affected by any metropolitan style scene and while we do like the bands that everybody else likes, we just found ourselves creating this sort of music that to us seemed perfectly natural, however mad it sounds to anybody else".

The only vague sort of reference points with The Coral are Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa - that free-form, freewheeling-style of musical composition that sees songs change abruptly out of key and styles, altering course midway through a verse.

"Yeah, I'd accept those two as sort of references and maybe Arthur Lee's Love as well," says Skelly, "but the real key here is that anyone can listen to Beefheart and Zappa and try to recreate that sort of sound, but what we did was we went back and listened to the music that inspired Beefheart and Zappa in their time - really strange jazz stuff from the 1950s. But it's not a retro thing - that's just boring, we're all big into Dr Dre - I think he's a genius along the lines of a Brian Wilson - and we do listen to a lot of contemporary stuff also - even Ms. Dynamite!"

It's not that their music is in any sense obscure; one of the singles off the first album, Dreaming Of You, is as good a three-minute pop song as you're ever likely to hear and made such an impression on one Joe Dolan that he recorded a cover version of it and released it as a single. "We heard about that - some Irish showband bloke or something covered it - haven't heard it yet, can't wait," says Skelly.

One of the main talking points about the band is their image - there is none. "People have tried with us," he laughs. "There's been a few suggestions about how we should present ourselves, but we're having none of it. You have to remember we were working on burger vans before the band got going, so if any of us started to dress differently or act differently, we'd have the piss ripped out of us by our mates. The thing is we don't actually like the music industry, we're not going to kiss MTV's arse or anything like that so we get our videos played. And we never turn up for award ceremonies, not to the Brits or to the Mercury or anything - and we're always up for something at these awards. We're just all very wary about the industry and how it works, again it could be because we're all from a small place and never really felt part of things but since we've started releasing records and seeing how the industry works, we've got a golden rule - don't trust anyone in the music industry - even if you like them".

It's an attitude that frustrates their record label and booking agents.

With their first album selling in Japan and the US, The Coral should be embarking on six-month tours of these countries, and while they have paid fleeting visits, they invariably complain about the lack of beans on toast and leg it back to Liverpool at the first available opportunity.

"We have no intention of scrabbling for fame," he says. "You see too much of that around anyway, with all these TV show acts who have no talent whatsoever. I know it's a terrible cliché, but we really are in it for the music. We do want to sell records, of course we do, but we want to try and do things on our own terms and so far that's worked. We do listen to our manager and we do listen to our label, but we make all the decisions ourselves ultimately"

Last month, The Coral decided to stage a homecoming gig in the Wirral. Warned by concert promoters that they would have to stage a few consecutive shows in order to break even, the band decided they only wanted to do one special gig, so they ended up paying £40,000 of their own money to cover the costs, despite a sell-out audience of 6,000 people.

Now in their early 20s, the band have just released their sophomore album, Magic and Medicine, which was preceded by two very strong singles, Don't Think You're The First and the ultra-catchy Pass It On.

"It's not as all over the place as the first," says Skelly. "I think we shouted at people on the first one, this time we're speaking to them".

Less gonzo than the début, Magic and Medicine is calmer and more accomplished. Lyrically it features references to Greek myths and Dylan Thomas (Skelly's favourite poet). The songwriting is superb and because a lot of the "out there-ness" has been toned down, the album is expected to out-do their début in the sales stakes.

"Sometimes it seems there aren't any other good bands out there, so everything is being put on us," says Skelly. "I think it's about to go into overdrive with The Coral now. I'll turn into Bono if I'm not careful . . ."

Magic and Medicine is on the Sony label