1.Dreaming of You (2:21) 2.Answer Me (3:09) 3.Follow the Sun (1:50) plus Dreaming of You [video]
The Coral are a band who often confused me. I first heard their single, 'Shadows Fall' on the radio and quite liked it - an interesting piece of chiming sixties-style pop with tiny little hints of dub. The next thing I heard from them was 'Skeleton Key', which I thought was a load of tuneless rubbish. Finally, when they made their chart debut with the rather better 'Goodbye' I was intrigued enough to borrow their much-praised untitled album from a workmate; the Coral revealed themselves as a band with innumerable ideas but little idea of which ones were good, making for an eventful but slightly frustrating 34 minutes. Hence my decision to buy the stand-out track as a single.
One reviewer compared Dreaming of You to Freddie and the Dreamers, but they said that like it was a bad thing. In truth it's a now rare case of an "indie" band releasing a proper unashamed pop song, which presumably accounts for its commercial success: their first Top Twenty hit and an impressive-by-2002-standards four weeks in the Top 40. The Coral dispense with the "Look out I'm totally bonkers!" japery of their previous work and come up with a bouncy little tune, expertly produced by Ian Broudie. Everything about this is so perfectly right, from the low saxophone riff, the tambourine in the middle section, even the xylophone solo, and it's not often you'll hear me say that.
It's not hard to see why Answer Me was relegated to a flipside. There's nothing wrong with it - it's a slightly broken-sounding lament on acoustic guitars - but it just isn't especially memorable.
Follow the Sun, written by guitarist Lee Southall is catchier if nothing else. Not to be confused with its similarly brief near-namesake on Beatles for Sale, it has a somehow crunchy quality. As they shout at the end, it's "Dedicated to Wizard!"
The video charmingly wears its low budget on its sleeve, although they could afford some intentionally shoddy back-projections, a telephone box on a beach and a bear costume. At least one Eels fan was pleased to see a poster for their Souljacker album in there too. See if you can spot it. The CD-ROM track also includes an advert for the album, featuring 30-second clips of all four associated videos (including the one you've just seen). I watched it all for the purposes of this, and found myself buying the album for £4:99 in a Woolworths sale later that day.
It took the Coral barely a year to top the chart with the much more user-friendly Magic & Medicine and at time of writing they're about to issue a third album.
ONLINE:
The band's official site is as quirky as you'd expect, albeit not ideally suited to slow connections. There's a video clip in the discography area if you can, er, click on the right pigeon.
Sony Music liked them so much, they bought the company.
Back to the random single project