• News

• All

Jun 16, 2023 By Mark Redfern

English rock band The Coral are releasing two new albums, Sea of Mirrors and Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, on September 8. Can they have shared a new song, “Drifter’s Prayer,” from Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show. It features spoken word vocals from British actor John Simm, who was in Life on Mars and played The Master in Doctor Who. Listen below.

The Coral’s frontman James Skelly had this to say in a press release about the collaboration with Simm: “Nick [Power] had this poem and we thought that we’d do something with, like a murder ballad. He also had this acoustic, country-style riff so we recorded it in the studio and it fitted with the words perfectly but it needed someone to do the narration. We just messaged John, he’d already been to a few gigs, and he said ‘yes’ straight away. Nailed it perfectly. He’s a pro. It’s great to be able to see someone like that working, someone who is just that good at doing their job.”

The band’s Nick Power adds: “We were talking about having a spoken word track on the album, but maybe bringing an actor in to voice it. I had the idea of this fairground worker looking back on his life, sort of like a eulogy to the old travelling carnival world and its customs. How those people were their own community, constantly on the move, drifting through England. And this person coming to terms with the modern world leaving him behind, in a way. John Simm came in and understood it right away. I think it took about two or three takes.”

Previously the band shared Sea of Mirrors track “Wild Bird.”

Both albums are due out September 8, but with a twist—Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show will only be released on physical formats (vinyl, CD, cassette) and not digitally.

The two albums are the follow-up to 2021’s Coral Island and 2018’s Move Through the Dawn. The new albums feature actor Cillian Murphy, The Sundowners, and Love guitarist Johnny Echols. Sean O’Hagan (The High Llamas, Stereolab) co-produced the albums and they also worked with producer Chris Taylor. The albums were partially recorded at Liverpool’s legendary Parr Street Studios, some of the last albums to be recorded there before it was closed down.

The Coral first came on the scene in the early 2000s, with their 2002-released self-titled debut getting nominated for The Mercury Prize. They have consistently released new albums since then.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.