Listen to The Coral’s dreamy new single ‘Lover Undiscovered’
The Coral have shared their brand new single ‘Lover Undiscovered’, which frontman James Skelly tells us is about those stolen and precious moments of young love.
Following on from ‘Faceless Angel’ and ‘The Great Muriarty (which featured James and Ian Skelly’s grandfather), ‘Lover Undiscovered’ is the latest taster of the indie veterans’ upcoming 10th album ‘Coral Island’ – a record inspired by their memories and fantasies of childhood seaside fairgrounds.
“I had the chord for ‘Lover Undiscovered’ for years, but could never finish it,” Skelly told NME. “But that first line, ‘She wakes up‘, is like the island waking up. It’s meant to be the beginning of something – a lover undiscovered. When you have those moments, don’t feel guilty about them.
“There’s this thing at the moment where if you ever have anything you should feel guilty about it – whether it’s social media, a feeling or whatever. If you have a moment, appreciate it, you don’t have to go and tell the world. Sometimes you can see something that you do when you’re a kid and when you have that, you’re grateful for it. That was the idea behind it.”
He added: “It’s like when you have teenage love at a fairground for the first time, it’s an undiscovered feeling. We put the organ on at the beginning because we wanted it to be like the island awakening and when you’re on the dodgems, it’s like that kind of music.”
Speaking to NME about the concept of their upcoming album, Skelly previously explained that he was inspired by “Arctic Monkeys‘ last album [‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’], in the sense that there was another world but it was thematic.”
Skelly went on: “I also liked [The Kinks‘] ‘Village Green’, The Ogdens and [The Beatles‘] ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’. A full concept album is when it goes into [The Who‘s] ‘Tommy’ or something like that. It’s not quite that, it’s more like a theme.
“It originally started off as a concept that ‘Coral Island’ was a place where our ideas came together, but then it started to grow from there. We were like, ‘We’ve never done our ‘White Album’. I also saw that Springsteen documentary [The Ties That Bind] about ‘The River’ and he said the rock ‘n’ roll songs were like the bands playing on the boardwalk and the slower ones were the characters who lived in those places. We got this idea that Part One of our album was the soundtrack to the rides in the summer and Part Two was about the characters.”
The Coral release their 10th album ‘Coral Island’ on April 30.