The Coral Sea of Mirrors LP

Imagine the scorched sand, cardboard cowboys, and flooded sets of a never-made Italian spaghetti western. The track "Wild Bird" takes Coral fans to the clapperboard on a new story playing out all the way to the release of the band's 11th studio album, Sea of Mirrors.

Following their acclaimed 2021 album Coral Island, the band felt inspired to create material: Sea of Mirrors' vivid concept is a blueprint for The Coral to move beyond all expectations once again.

Sea of Mirrors, is a sepia-toned, string-filled, and melancholy imagined soundtrack for a vintage spaghetti Western starring Lee Hazlewood as the busted-up and bitter troubadour. Calling in the arrangement expertise of Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas fame, the band chose to outfit the songs in orchestral flourishes, vocal choruses, and Western-friendly banjos and acoustic guitars. It ends up being their most adult-sounding album yet; stately and nostalgically sad, it sheds all traces of psychedelia in favor of an almost-middle-of-the-road approach where the road is old and covered in sand, barely used, and caked in nostalgia. The elaborate ballads and misty melodies are tailor-made for James Skelly's voice, he's got pipes big enough to inhabit the songs like an aging gunfighter while at the same time hinting at the pain lurking beneath the hard-worn surface. The band proves just as adept at creating the perfect atmosphere, filling the sonic spectrum with galloping basslines, rippling percussion, jangling and twanging guitars, and the occasional dusty piano. When paired with the widescreen efforts of O'Hagan, they come up with a sound old Lee would have been proud to call his own.