James Skelly on The Coral's new concept albums

AS YOU read this, The Coral's fans are eagerly anticipating their first listens of not one but two new albums  released today by their Merseyside-bred heroes.

James Skelly, on the other hand, has already had his fill of both Sea of Mirrors and the physical release-only, never to be re-issued Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show, his band's first new material since 2021's double-set, Coral Island, which reached number two on the charts.

"You're sort of relieved, I think," says The Coral's frontman of how it feels to send each new opus out into the world after months, sometimes even years, of graft and craft.

"You want your fans to hear it and stuff, but usually you're kind of utterly bored of it by that point. Once it's out, that's when you can move on, so you're looking forward to that, really.

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"By then, it's for everyone else [to enjoy]."

As its title suggests, Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show is a tie-in of sorts to the band's last record, a psychedelic concept album revolving around the rise and fall of the titular imaginary holiday isle populated by various colourful characters.

The new limited edition album is also a concept piece, documenting a radio programme hosted by Skelly's grandad Ian, AKA Holy Joe (who also provided narration as The Great Moriarty on Coral Island), who introduces a bewitching selection of outlaw ditties performed by the band.

"It's meant to be a midnight radio show type thing, playing death ballads and drifter songs," explains Skelly, who formed the band with his drummer brother, Ian, back in 1996, of the idea behind the record.

"It was inspired by the songs Hank Williams did under his pseudonym Luke The Drifter. The rule was, 'someone has to die in every song' – so by the end, we were crowbarring in a few deaths."

Clocking in at just shy of 30 minutes, the album is a wonderfully evocative, atmospheric listen, characterised by twangy, pre-Beatles rock and roll guitar playing and the imagination-sparking between song chatter of Grandad Ian – who was integral to the whole endeavour, as Skelly explains.

"Oh yeah, we couldn't leave him out," enthuses the singer and guitarist, who's also an in-demand producer.

"On the last album, we got number two in the charts and then we also got the indie number one – so we just told him we got number one. He went on a three-day bender with Ian, like full Jim Morrison."

Actor John Simm adds to the rich texture of the album by supplying spine-tingling narration for the single Drifter's Prayer, a collaboration rooted in the Life on Mars star's support for The Coral in their very early days prior to their first Top 20 hit single Dreaming of You in 2002, a tune which kicked open the door to a solid run of five back-to-back Top 10 albums, including 2003's number one, Magic and Medicine.

"John Simm was one of the first people to sort of big us up when we did our first EP. He was mates with [Echo and The Bunnymen leader] Ian McCulloch. I think we spoke to him back then, and Nick [Power, Coral keys man] had contacted him a few times on Instagram.

"We thought 'he's from Blackpool, so he'll get this old carny character that has sort of been left behind from the fair'. He came in and he just nailed it in a few takes."

There's also some star-power present on Sea of Mirrors, The Coral's 'mainstream' concept album – available on digital as well as physical formats – a captivating set of reverb-soaked, strings-enhanced, north-west coast-informed chamber pop tunes detailing the plight of a fictional, doomed Spaghetti Western production: Co Cork-born Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy lends his voice to the climactic track Oceans Apart, portraying the fading star of the stricken picture as he ruminates on what has become of his once glittering career.

So, was Murphy, well-known as an alternative music enthusiast who has hosted shows on BBC 6Music and DJed many charity events, a confirmed fan of The Coral?

"I'm not sure how much of a fan he was, really," says Skelly, who reveals that he made contact with the actor through another Irish connection who worked on the album, Microdisney, High Llamas and Stereolab alumni Sean O'Hagan.

"Sean O'Hagan, who did the strings, one of his best mates is one of Cillian Murphy's best mates. Sean did the soundtrack for one of his first films [1999's Sunburn], which I think went straight to video.

"We were talking about the record and he said, 'maybe Cillian Murphy could read this bit at the end?', so we were like 'well, yeah – if you think you can get him, like?'. And then the next minute, I got an email off Cillian saying, 'Yeah, I'll help you out. I like your band and I'll give you a bell tomorrow'.

"He rang me and we just chatted about what the character was, sort of like a Buster Keaton or Bela Lugosi, a once-great star who ended up in all these typecast B-movies in the 60s or 70s. He's looking back on his life thinking, 'How did I get here?' Which was kind of like what happened in lockdown, really.

"So he took that away, and then we spoke to him about writers I like, like Richard Yates, and films we liked and characters, and how to build the character – and I sort of left it up to him.

"He sent us his first take like 'here's an idea' and we were like 'well, you're done: that's great'. We just put a bit of reverb on it and it fitted perfectly."

As for how the idea to create an album based on their very own Spaghetti Western came about, it seems Skelly has always been a fan of the European-made cowboy flicks of the 60s and 70s, especially the ones which pointedly subverted the genre in much the same way The Coral have enjoyed putting their own esoteric, psychedelic slant on all kinds of sounds, from Merseybeat to Krautrock, throughout their eclectic 20 year-long recording career.

"I've always liked the kind of ridiculousness of it," he says, "and I liked the way the the idea was to use the medium, use the genre, like a lot of those directors did. They might have wanted to make a horror film, but [the Western] was the popular medium of the time, so they turned a Western into a horror – or a comedy, or a political movie.

"I think with a lot of the Italian Westerns, the directors had grown up through fascism with Mussolini. Then, the first films they'd been allowed to see were these [American] Westerns, which were all about this fanatical belief in freedom – the total opposite [of what they'd experienced] in a way, I think. And I think a lot of them used their own films to comment on that.

"So we kind of wanted to do what they did, but with music – just bastardise the medium with like, our surreal take on it.

"The idea was like, 'if Fellini directed a Spaghetti Western, with Lee Hazlewood doing the soundtrack, what would it be like?' It was that thing of like, 'I wish that existed, but it doesn't – so we'll have to make it ourselves'."

Sea of Mirrors and Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show are released today, see thecoral.co.uk for more details.