One More Time

The Coral

Stubb's, Saturday, March 15 Already heralded from Esquire to Pop Culture Press, the Coral are h-u-g-e, and you don't even know it. You limped past the Liverpool sixpiece on your way to the Supergrass show at Stubb's; you know, those buskers out front of Elysium, where at one point, five whole passersby jangled the change in their pocket while eyeing the recent high schoolers. By 11pm, 2,000 or so backyard burnouts -- SXSW Saturday night separates the Survivors from the swill hounds and swollen shoes -- still wouldn't have recognized the generic-looking blokes. By then, however, they had been properly rocked by the Coral's first generation Brit pop: Gerry & the Pacemakers, Zombies, Kinks. The stalking riff opening the group's eponymous debut brought on goose bumps similar to those raised by SXSW 02 Liverpool headliners Clinic, and between shove-off "Spanish Main" and the extended roil of closer "Goodbye," the Coral's wayfaring pirate ditties announced another isle-based invasion. Marching war hoarse "I Remember When" provided the same Eric Burdon bark as "Dreaming of You," while the militia nursery rhyme "Simon Diamond" threw its own terrible pop tantrum. Organ-roasted castigator "Bad Man" was both bratty and brawny. It was the long sunspot flair of "Goodbye" that threw the somewhat disjointed string of two-minute pop stampedes into stark relief. Two guitars, heave-ho keyboards, and a mutiny onstage weren't quite as Sixties galactic as Camper Van Beethoven ending their New Times day party at Antone's several hours earlier with Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdive," but the Coral left a shore full of buzz seekers with their ear to a new shell.