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"We are the illegitimate children of Boris Becker, traveling the world making money off his name. With this record, we seek the reward we deserve." J.Skelly
After a statement like that, you might think you've figured out everything about the Coral. They’re eccentric. After Magic And Medicine, which earned them nominations for two Brit Awards (best group-best album), the six terrible guys are back, each with their own alter-ego character (Zac Bakpak, Thumb, My Brother The Doctor, Lobos are just a few of the names of the six illegitimate sons, pictured in the booklet).
Third (this time mini) album in just two years, Nightfreak And The Sons of Becker is the result of seven days of recording at Bryn Derwen Studios in North Wales: no promotional singles, no videos, nothing at all. In fact, if you don't hurry to buy it, you might not find it anymore: they'll soon pull it from the market because it's considered a mini album in a limited edition. 28 minutes and six seconds in total. 28 minutes of dreamy, insane, blues, rock, lo-fi, poisoned music.
The album is not easy, but those who love the Coral already knew that. It is certainly different from the two previous releases. It could be considered the perfect and concise algebraic sum of the psychotic and unstable rhythm of the first with the tranquility and country-western atmospheres of the second. It is certainly a less complete album compared to their self-titled debut, but it will certainly end up being much less boring and more fluid compared to Magic And Medicine (which, in the long run, becomes tiring, and it requires effort to play it from start to finish again).
The songs differ from each other in a scary way: Lovers Paradise, which closes the album, is a blues song we might find in an old film where Fred Astaire dances and sings (complete with gramophone crackles included), while Precious Eyes is the classic Coral song with various rhythmic-instrumental “turnabouts.” Perhaps the song that best represents the entire album is Auntie’s Operation (download it if you can…), where police sirens in the background mess everything up as if it needed it.
If Nick Power and his keyboards emerged prominently in Magic And Medicine, now it's Paul Duffy's turn with his twisted and never banal bass lines (Grey Harpoon) to give structure to the songs. And then, characters speaking in absurd voices, raw rock rhythms à la Pavement mixed with the rock of the Doors of Five To One, again mixed with village fair dance rhythms.
In short, a mess. Actually, a beautiful mess.
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