THE CORAL share video for new single ‘Lover Undiscovered’ from upcoming double album ‘Coral Island’

THE CORAL share video for new single 'Lover Undiscovered' from upcoming double album 'Coral Island' 2

Cutting the sweet, major-chord optimism of spring with the frayed pages of might-have-been memory, Lover Undiscovered becomes the second single from The Coral’s upcoming TENTH studio album, Coral Island. The track is the latest to emerge from the band’s first-ever double album, painting soulful, sugar-spun pictures of sunnier days after the shadow-cast, ghost train rattle and roll of January’s Faceless Angel.

Coral Island exists in day and night, winter and summer and in good times and bad, with Side-A soundtracking the sunset-lit rush of stepping into the fairground’s candyfloss-scented air for the first time, the songs of jukebox heroes ricocheting between colliding sound systems and the long, thrilling night that lies ahead. Lover Undiscovered’s hazy, prom-strolling melodies, glinting guitar lines and warm-breeze vocal harmonies set a scene of fragile contentment beside the seaside.

James Skelly says of the single: “To me, ‘Lover Undiscovered’, is about when you notice or feel something you take for granted, as simple as the sea or a bird flying, and it’s like discovering that feeling all over again. We wanted the recording to sound like The Velvet Underground playing a Motown song in Rhyl Sun Centre.”

Watch the video for ‘Lover Undiscovered’ – BELOW:

The release of Lover Undiscovered follows news of that an accompanying book will also be released at the same time as Coral Island on Fri 30 April 2021, written by the band’s keyboard player and songwriter, Nick Power, with 20 new illustrations by drummer and accomplished artist, Ian Skelly. Over Coral Island, a 188 page companion piece to the album’s vivid, aural depictions of a time and place that perhaps never was, promises an energetically told, fictional account of places and people familiar to both the author and anyone who has felt the uneasy thrill of finding fun in Britain’s coastal towns.

Seldom understated nor undersold, The Coral’s ability to shock, surprise and amaze as ringmasters of their own seaside revue was shown once more with the announcement that James and Ian Skelly’s 85-year-old grandad has assumed the role of ‘The Great Muriarty’, the record’s worldly-wise, all-seeing narrator. It will be the first time in the band’s history that anyone other than James Skelly has assumed ‘lead vocal’ duties on a record by The Coral.

Visual manifestations of Coral Island come courtesy of artist, Edwin Burdis, who built a vast, physical representation of the band’s otherworld across a former Chinese restaurant in Cardiff city centre. The artist and filmmaker, who has previously worked with artists including Arctic Monkeys, with creative direction around their 2018 album, Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino, took the lead from films like Star Wars and the work of great model-based animators such as Ray Harryhausen, to develop a vast ‘walk-in’ diorama of Coral Island. The video for Lover Undiscovered gives another view of the island, populated with sculpture, charity shop finds and cottonwool clouds.

The Coral

Almost 19 years after the release of their celebrated, self-titled, Mercury Music Prize-nominated, platinum-certified debut in 2002, kick-starting a decade of classic singles, including Dreaming Of You (now on over 100 million streams globally and gaining UK Platinum status), Pass It On, Don’t Think You’re The First and In The Morning, The Coral have moved into 2021 as in thrall to the self-endowed gift of creative freedom as they were on day one. The band has sold over a million albums to date.

Of their nine albums to date, the last of which, Move Through The Dawn, was released in 2018, five have reached the Top 10 including 2003’s chart-topping Gold-selling Magic and Medicine which saw the band nominated for Best Group at the Brit Awards. Never anything other than wilfully idiosyncratic and critically-praised, the follow-up, The Invisible Invasion reached No.3 in the UK Albums Chart and joins it’s predecessor in being certified Gold.

Recorded in a sense of barely-controlled, copy and paste chaos at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, Coral Island was written and performed by the multi-instrumentalist and multi-talented line-up of James Skelly, Ian Skelly, Nick Power, Paul Duffy and Paul Molloy plus guest vocalist, Ian Murray.

Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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