THE CORAL follow deadbeats, fools, romantics and wanderers... to 'The Sinner'

Lights dim and shadows grow long to meet the night as The Coral sketch out a beat ballad to lost souls…
 
THE SINNER

 The Coral – The Sinner
From Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show
Physical Formats Only - Released Fri 8 September 2023
Run On Records in assoc. with Modern Sky UK
Also released this autumn: Sea Of Mirrors
www.thecoral.co.uk

CLICK FOR VIDEO / AUDIO

Pen pictures of deadbeats, fools, hopeless romantics and wanderers continue to pour from The Coral’s forthcoming two albums, each vividly drawn into living within the flickering light of rich, mid-century, cinematic instrumentation, as they release The Sinner – OUT NOW. Drawn from the physical formats-only release of 17-track album, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, out on Fri 8 September 2023, the song sits at the crossroads where the band’s heavenly, harmonic joy meets the growling pains of stolen souls.
 
Writing a second-hand postcard from the land they now call their own, Coral Island, the subject of their widely-acclaimed 2021 double album of the same name, to their newest conceptual domain, that of forthcoming album, Sea Of Mirrors’ drowned Italian western films sets, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show is a broken broadcast of spoken word and song. The Sinner joins the recent release of Drifter’s Prayer, featuring the actor, John Simm, as one of the only songs from the purposely analogue Holy Joe… album hitting digital formats.
 
Fitting into the band’s preoccupations with the undersides of cinema history, The Sinner was inspired by 2019 Irish film, Calm With Horses. With tremelo guitars, a rhumba rhythm and a conscious effort to sketch out the sound of a band plying its trade on stages in smokey 6o’s dives, the track’s sense of the sinister, of deals gone wrong and no solutions sitting at the bottom of a glass, slots it effortlessly into The Coral’s extensive songbook.
 
James Skelly says of the track: “I was trying to imagine ‘Calm With Horses’ as a noir with a soundtrack by a nameless Merseybeat group that only exists in a half-forgotten dream.”

Now on the final straits in the slow race to release their 11th and 12th albums at the same time, The Coral introduced Sea Of Mirrors with the release of the hope-filled, sweet layer cake of Wild Bird earlier this year. Following up with Oceans Apart, featuring Oppenheimer actor, Cillian Murphy, and the driving, if wistful, celebration of ultimate freedom, That’s Where She Belongs, The Coral have drawn outlines of an album, whilst based on the disaster of a flooded mediterranean film set and the down-and-out disappointments of fallen icons, that is a work of studied beauty.
 
Rich in layered vocal harmonies, detailed string arrangements, thanks to co-producer and arranger,  The High Llamas and Stereolab’s Sean O’Hagan, Sea Of Mirrors is not only the fulfilment of their soundtrack ambitions, for now, but features some of their most refined songwriting to date. On a wavelength all of their own, James Skelly’s conundrum of discovering two potential albums had come out of final recording sessions at the now lost, legendary Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, was solved when keyboard player, Nick Power, and drummer, Ian Skelly, created a script and poster artwork for the film, “an Italian western directed by Fellini with a Richard Yates-written script”, that had been playing in his head.
 
While the other album to come from those sessions, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, will only be available to fans and collectors on single-pressing physical vinyl, CD and cassette formats, Sea Of Mirrors will be more conventionally released on multiple, limited-edition and standard vinyl formats as well as CD, cassette and digital.

The Coral’s status in British music is assured, 21 years after their first releases on legendary Liverpool indie, Deltasonic. by their run of radio hit singles including Dreaming Of You (now on over 100 million streams globally and securing UK Platinum status), Pass It On, Don’t Think You’re The First and In The Morning. Six of their previous albums have reached the Top 10 including Coral Island and 2003’s No.1 chart success, Magic and Medicine, which saw the band nominated for Best Group at the Brit Awards.

The Coral is James Skelly, Ian Skelly, Nick Power, Paul Duffy and Paul Molloy.
 
For information about releases and live dates, connect with The Coral at:
 
twitter.com/thecoralband
www.facebook.com/TheCoral
www.instagram.com/thecoralband

Image: The Coral (L-R Paul Duffy, James Skelly, Nick Power, Ian Skelly, Paul Molloy) - (c) Jack Finnigan