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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
The Coral Sea
EMAILPRINTby Patti Smith and Kevin Shields
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 16 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 2 votes
Read user comments
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Album Info
Label: Pask
Release Date: 08 July 2008
Discs: 2 disc
Genre(s): Rock
Summary
Recorded in 2005-2006, the live set is based on a poem about the famed photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, who was also Patti Smith's friend.
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
All Music Guide
Poetry and music are so closely aligned anyway that at their best, they become one. This is a stunning, awe-inspiring, love-soaked example.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's a moving work, intensified by Shields' improvisational guitar and the way Smith's voice makes Mapplethorpe's particular story universal.
Read Full Review >Sputnikmusic
Ultimately this is very hard to judge as pop music. Judged as art, however, it's sensual, insidious, cathartic, and quite beautiful.
Read Full Review >Uncut
It's a stunning performance, drawing fire from Smith's stentorian performance, providing the ballast for the voyage of her Rimbaudian drunken boat. [Aug 2008, p.104]
PopMatters
As for The Coral Sea, it’s a magnificent tribute and a monumental accomplishment in the career of one of America’s truly outstanding artists.
Read Full Review >Prefix Magazine
It seems Smith and Shields simply both did what they are best at, and in the process uncovered some common ground that few thought existed. Fortunately, the results are riveting.
Read Full Review >Spin
Here, she's captured twice in concert feverishly reading her phantasmagoric memorial to friend and artist Robert Mapplethorpe with the accompaniment of fellow savant Kevin Shields, the reclusive My Bloody Valentine leader who matches the ebb and flow of her morphing prose with thunderstorms of guitar sustain that weep and roar empathetically.
Read Full Review >The Guardian
Her words have the fire and focus of her greatest work as she struggles with the bitter truth that such a breathtaking talent could be so cruelly extinguished. Kevin Shields has recently been boosting demand for earplugs with his My Bloody Valentine live shows, but here he is perfectly restrained, supplying sounds and textures to a gripping, if demanding, two-hour listen.
Read Full Review >Village Voice
Like all of her wordplay--as written, sometimes spontaneously spoken, and occasionally sung--it fits.
Read Full Review >Dusted Magazine
The final rush commingles anguish and ecstasy quite powerfully, glorying in the significance Mapplethorpe held for Smith and resonating for anyone who has lost someone and is willing to be taken to the water.
Read Full Review >Under The Radar
Smith's love for the sensuousness of language and her possessed recitation coupled with Shields' auractic guitar scrawls succeed in ways unimaginable. [Fall 2008, p.84]
The New York Times
A year later Mr. Shields turned The Coral Sea into an evolving, reverberating, nearly unbroken wash of sound, as boundless and mutable as the ocean itself.
Read Full Review >Filter
Shield's stark and shimmering shoegaze guitars expand and contract like colossal organs under Smith's chameleonic spoken word. [Summer 2008, p.97]
Pitchfork
The first disc, a June 2005 concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, starts out lifeless, with little variety in Smith's voice or Shields' metronomic guitar. Halfway through the hour-long performance, things pick up, as Smith yells fervent imperatives over shimmering waves from Shields' amp.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Away from the atmosphere and visuals of live performance, over an hour of such dense and highly personal account of pain and beauty on the threshold of death is particularly demanding; a pity it's not available on DVD. [Aug 2008, p.103]
Q Magazine
A draining, rewarding journey. [Aug 2008, p.143]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
