Coral Island

Coral Island is an ambitious record that never topples under the weight of that ambition. Unusually for a double album there’s barely any filler and the songs have a timeless quality that keeps you returning. At the end of their second decade, The Coral have released the best album of their career.

‘Coral Island’ is huge in scope and ambition, while also remaining staggeringly consistent. The bar is set high from the off, and they never fail to reach it. A lazy comparison: it’s as creative as ‘The White Album’ and as unified as ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’. A truly superb experience, it feels as though The Coral have painted their masterpiece – a one way ticket to ‘Coral Island’ is a truly an offer you can’t turn down.

This is a truly lovely album, sweet without being saccharine, and a perfect accompaniment to the spring sunshine.

Such is the attention to detail that it evokes an eerie world of rattling ghost trains and deserted penny arcades as successfully as a windswept day-trip to Blackpool. [Jun 2021, p.81]

Their ambitious double may aspire to the eclecticism of The Beatles’ White Album, but it remains resolutely, if sweetly, sepia-toned.

It's the melodic strength of its 15 "proper" songs that's the real mindblower. [May 2021, p.81]

It’s a bold move for The Coral to come out with something so intricate at this stage of their career, even taking the time to pen an accompanying book. But immerse yourself in this heavily themed epic and you’ll be rewarded with a nostalgic trip that showcases some of their most adventurous writing to date.

At times they overstretch – the tail-end of Part One drifts like fish and chip wrapper in the breeze – but a visit to Coral Island elicits the intangible pull of a place in time etched forever in the mind. Roll up, roll up.