Hugh Montgomery 

The Coral: Butterfly House

There are some fine melodies on the Wirral-based psychedelicists' sixth album, but some of their earlier chaotic bravado wouldn't go amiss, says Hugh Montgomery
  
  


Over their eight-year career, the Coral's output has become ever more consistent, even as they've lost commercial ground within the British rock fraternity. Perhaps, though, consistency is also part of their problem. Melodically, their sixth album is a gem, channelling familiar influences – Love, Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds – into sweetly rolling psychedelia, while frontman James Skelly has never sounded so beautifully forlorn. But one yearns for more of the chaotic bravado that drove their early work: amid dreamy harmonies and jangly guitar lines, only the crescendoing title track and rumbling freak-out "North Parade" truly catch fire.

 

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