The Coral: 'We wanted to just take it back to the old-school way'

“I think because we did two quite big conceptual albums (2021’s Coral Island and 2023’s Sea of Mirrors), we wanted to just take it back to almost the old-school way, getting word of mouth, something very simple,” explains keyboard player Nick Power. “There’s only one pressing of it (on vinyl) in one colour; the last few albums there’s been about 13 pressings. It’s for the fans as much as anything, that – a simple way which reflects the music as well.”

Allowing diehard fans to hear the album before more casual listeners dip into it on streaming platforms is important, Power feels. “The fans have been really good to us, they deserve to be rewarded in some way,” he says. “But I also like the idea of people talking about it between themselves and discovering it without going to brush their teeth in the morning and getting 67 notifications (on their mobile phone), it takes the special thing away from it. I think the things you discover yourself always end up having more of a special meaning to you.”

The album’s genesis occured during a series of question-and-answer sessions that Power and bandmates James and Ian Skelly, Paul Duffy and Paul Molloy undertook to promote their book, The Making of the First Album, and James Slater’s subsequent documentary film about The Coral, Dreaming Of You.

“It wasn’t planned,” Power says. “After the last two or three albums which were like products of lockdown with loads of ideas thrown in because everyone had time on their hands, we had books associated with them and multiple posters, it was like creating big worlds, but life started up again and quite a few of us had kids and had to get jobs on the side, so it’s harder to hang around together like we used to, but the book tour took us to these mad towns that were almost Coral Island-esque places so we found ourselves really at home in markets and car boot sales buying old rock ’n’ roll compilations again and reggae stuff.

“Because we had to work out the book tour, what we were going to do, we started mapping and remembering our own past. We’d spent years getting away from it so by the end of the book tour, it was like oh, that’s what actually happened to what we’d been through and that ended up becoming a documentary. In the early days what we were listening to was 2 Tone and early (Bob) Marley, Jamaican music in the UK, so when we stumbled upon that, that was a eureka moment – let’s do something with that spirit.

“Back then we tried to do it but it’s almost like (William Blake’s) Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience thing where you haven’t quite been through enough in your life to write with authority on deep emotional things. So when we got to this age, with everything we’ve been through – the tours, the pressure of being signed young, people passing away, people being born – all that goes into it, so I think the emotional resonance in it is more authentic.”

The uncontrived nature of old ska and reggae records was a big inspiration for The Coral. “I think innocence is the word,” says Power. “We really made an effort to not have a sophisticated chord shape because it’s that thing again: it’s hardest to do the easiest thing in music. When you start getting into really sophisticated stuff I think you can be masking certain things but when you strip in right back to the naked bones that’s when you ge the truth, and that’s the rarest thing.”

Middle-age has given Power and James Skelly, the band’s principal songwriters, a different perspective. “It’s more effortless, I think,” Power says. “That’s what we strive for, a kind fo effortless grace in writing where it’s almost automatic but you’re using your experience in the way an experienced artist would. I’m not comparing myself to Picasso, but in those videos where he’s just drawing freehand on that glass, h’s old but everything he does is brilliant because he’s reached that point. I’d love to get to that point.”

The band even recorded The 388 all in the same room in a studio in a “rundown part” of Liverpool city centre. “All the 2 Tone and Studio One records, I think they’d basically learn the song that day and you’d get all the lovely mistakes,” Power says. “If you’re in the studio it’s so hard to not fix everything because it’s your first instinct. But my favourite bits of those old records are the bits that are completely wrong, like a keyboard will just come in too loud on one side of the speaker, it’s probably an accident but they only had an hour to put it out because it was getting pressed and it needed to be with the DJ the next day for the dancehall meet.”

The keyboard player feels that the entire process of making the record was restorative. “It was almost like seeing yourself for the first time in years,” Power says. “As a band, we’ve always been like ‘run away from yourself, move forward’ and the past has been so complicated for us anyway. We could speak to five different people from our career and they’d say different things about us, like ‘you’re a failure’, ‘you did it right’, ‘you could’ve done this’. To some people we failed, to some people we succeeded, you don’t know unless you look back and become at peace with it yourself.”

In October the band will play their first UK headline tour in three years, and Power is excited. “I’m looking forward to doing a tour because the fans have been asking for it for ages,” he says. “I think it took us a long while to get out of lockdown in some ways. It’s not the easiest thing to keep a band going unless you’re huge in this day and age because you don’t make an awful lot of money from it. We make a living but if it’s not a labour of love then there’s nothing down for you so you’ve got to fight to stay in love with it sometimes.”

The 388 is out now. The Coral play at The Foundry, Sheffield on October 2 and Project House, Leeds on October 10. https://thecoral.co.uk/