So you've read the Q reviews...you've read the NME articles, you even read an article about them in the Liverpool Echo, yet you haven't aquainted yourself with the mad, mad world of The Coral... so where do you start?
Well buggered if I know.

I suggest you start at the beginning, a very good place to start. (Do, re, me!)

Transport yourself to 1996, Hoylake, on the Wirral.. Oasis are kings of the charts..and 6 lads decide they wanna be in a band. These certain six lads are:

* James Skelly, occasional guitar, songwriter and vocals (the growling one!)
* Bill Ryder-Jones, guitar and trumpet
* Ian Skelly is the drummer Drums
* Nick Power on the Organ and Vocals
* Lee Southall on the guitar and Vocals
* Paul Duffy on the Bass Guitar and Saxophone

The band also have their own "dancer".. nicknamed Phil "Woi Oi Boy" who appears randomly on stage shouting, yes, you guessed it: "Woi Oi!"

In the summer of 2001, The Coral released their first EP "Shadows Fall". It arrived to a very warm welcome, at last here was something new. Not something old re-discovered with a drum-looped beat and the occasional extra lyric, no, nor was it agression filled nu-metal or rap.. no quite the opposite.. in fact, is that a barber-shop quartet?!
"Shadows Fall" was limited to 1,000 copies, and they are now like golddust.

The next brick in the path was "The Oldest Path" (see how I linked that? Pretty clever eh?) which was limited again, this time to 2,000 copies, and was once more critically acclaimed, and the critics could still not put their finger on it "sea-bed shanty"....ahem.

"Skeleton Key" was next, the group's first single to be unlimited, and the critics have all but given up trying to categorise them.

And now the album, working title "The Zion Egg" or "The Sons Of Becker" if you are to believe the giggling bunch in a recent XFM interview.. the tracklisting according to NME is:
‘Spanish Main’
‘I Remember When’
‘Shadows Fall’
‘Dreaming Of You’
‘Simon Diamond’
‘Goodbye’
‘Waiting For The Heartaches’
‘Skeleton Key’
‘Wild Fire’
‘Bad Man’
‘Calendars & Clocks’
*With "Time Travel" rumoured to be the album's hidden track.