The Coral was one of those bands I discovered purely by accident. Back in my Borders day I was working on something in the back and some slacker coworker who liked to process magazines for six hours (it was a half hour job tops) was attempting to play every single free CD the store owned. This happened to be one of them. I didn't even let this coworker get the chance to add this freebie to his collection; I was all over it. Even though the Coral didn't make a cent off of me on this album, I would go on to purchase outright all but the last album (unavailable in the US, even after 4 years!), and also grab the two-disc "best of" set just to get at some unreleased material.
The Coral have a clear trajectory from their pirate/weird first album to fairly mainstream as they matured. It's hard to believe, but I think the whole band was under 20 years old when the debut album was recorded. Most of the nautical references and shanty-style music was pretty much gone by the release of the bizarro EP Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker, and fairly scant on the second album, Magic and Medicine, both of which were released very rapidly following this album. The Invisible Invasion, their third full-length outing marked the end of an era of quick and quirky releases; the band would only release two albums after it in the following ten years, neither of which exhibit much spontaneity, though sound nice and professional.
Sometimes though it's just fun to get back to the first album. You'll never hear the band more rambunctious than on a song like "Skeleton Key", featuring an unexpected coda at the end. Songs like "Dreaming of You" and "Goodbye" sound good anytime, and (at least in the case of the former) got picked up for soundtracks around the time. Finally, I dig the clever use of horns, particularly on "Dreaming of You" and "Wildfire", something that would not occur on any of the future albums. Certainly, this is a contender of top form for my own personal "best album you've never heard" competition. Go stream it and decide for yourself!
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