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Remember the Coral? These youthful rockers brightened up the early 00s music scene with their melodic mix of 60s Merseybeat and off-kilter psychedelia, before seemingly melting back into obscurity. In truth, they’re not really prime rockumentary material – they were never particularly huge in terms of either popularity or personal drama – but this film playfully captures the spirit of a bunch of talented young mates who just wanted to play in a band, and got their wish.
Founding members James Skelly, his brother Ian, Paul Duffy, Bill Ryder-Jones and Lee Southall were all working-class kids growing up on the Wirral, between Liverpool and Wales, goofing around, living in their own world. “Probably the first incarnation of the band was a ghost-hunting business,” says Skelly. By their teens, they were playing guitars, smoking weed and studying pop music more than school; not just the classics – Beatles, Kinks, Small Faces, this hot new band called Oasis – but also leftfield stuff like Captain Beefheart, close-harmony vocal groups from the 1950s, even the Coronation Street theme tune.
From there it was a quest to find their own musical voice, with help from the likes of the Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie, before a steady climb: a residency at Liverpool’s totemic Cavern club, Top of the Pops, Glastonbury and critical acclaim for their debut album. Touchingly, some band members had to get their parents to sign their first record contract, as they were still under 18.
As the title suggests, this is less the standard “rise, fall, reform years later” music biodoc template, and more just a simple rise. But much like the Coral’s music, there’s an eccentric, unpretentious charm to this film. Visually, it is an imaginative collage of childhood photos and lo-fi animation mixed with archive footage and home movies. There are no modern-day talking heads, only voiceover narration – and the fact that we lose track of which band member is talking kind of fits with their collective ethos. “It was always us against them,” as one of them says.
By the end you’re left wondering if the band’s self-professed refusal to play the industry game is the whole story, or whether they faded faster than they’d have liked. (Like me, you may be surprised to learn the band are still going, and have released 12 studio albums.) But it’s no chore to revisit the Coral’s rich, distinctive back catalogue – especially the title track, which you’ll doubtless be humming for days afterwards.
