The Coral

The band The Coral formed in 1996 in Hoylake, Merseyside, England by a half-dozen schoolmates. Raised on Britpop, Merseybeat and 1960s psychedelic folk, lead singer James Skelly, bassist Pail Duffy, drummer Ian Skelly, guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones, and guitarist Lee Southall formed into a jamboree of jangling indie pop that quickly had NME magazine billing them as the next big thing. Full of hazy harmonies and tripped-out jams, their eponymous debut album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2002, reached Number 5 in the UK charts and produced the hit single “Dreaming of You”. Counting Noel Gallagher as one of their biggest fans, the band's success grew with their second album Magic and Medicine (2003), which shot straight to the top of the charts with lead single “Pass It On” becoming a lilting summer anthem. With Portishead's Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley as producers, Invisible Invasion (2005) took a slightly darker turn before Roots and Echoes (2007) strummed and clattered into a lo-fi attempt at a classic West Coast pop sound and became their fifth consecutive top 10 album. Butterfly House saw its release in 2010 followed soon after by Butterfly House Acoustic featuring the album tracks unplugged. The original album was named UK Album of the Year at the Music Producers Guild Awards in 2010. After a few years away, they returned with 2016’s Distance Inbetween, and 2018’s Move Through the Dawn. They waited out the COVID-19 pandemic before issuing 2021’s Coral Island. The band rallied an all-star cast of personalities for their eleventh studio album Sea of Mirrors (2023), with the likes of Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy, former Coral guitarist-turned-solo star Bill Ryder-Jones, famed UK actor John Simm and Love guitarist Johnny Echols all stepping up to the plate. Also in 2023, the band released an accompanying album called Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show, a spin-off LP descended from their 2021 offering Coral Island.