The Coral are amazing. That point will, pretty much, be the focus of this review, so I thought I’d be best getting it out of the way first. Tonight was actually the 3rd time I’ve seen these guys live, so their amazing-ness isn’t exactly fresh news to me, but it’s still nice to get a reminder!

The gig was held at the newly refurbished Academy 1 in Manchester. I’m not a big fan of what they’ve done to the place to be honest - it’s now much, much bigger, yet they’ve opted for only a single bar, located on the far wall from the entrance. It took around 20 minutes to get the first drinks in, which is pretty shoddy compared to the time it took to get served in the venue’s previous incarnation (especially at the back bar, which has now sadly been removed to make more space). Rather than queue again and miss half the set we ordered all our beers in this first order - we looked proper classy, trying to shuffle into a decent position in the crowd, all cradling 3 or 4 tins of Stella each. It doesn’t help that the bar staff INSIST on opening every single can before passing them to you, resulting in as much beer being spilt as you have a bit of a dance as you get down your neck.

But anyway, back to the amazing Coral. I’d seen them supporting Oasis in Manchester a couple of years back, and they were part of the Artic Monkey’s “mini-festival” this summer at Old Trafford Cricket ground, but I’d never seen them play a full headline set and so was really looking forward to this gig. They didn’t dissapoint. Starting off with recent hit “Who’s gonna find me” (video below) they played an extensive set of all their hits such as Dreaming of You, In the Morning, Find a Feeling and latest single Jaqueline, along with lesser known older and album track, they just kept rocking. Frontman James Skelly is possibly among one of the most underated gems in Britian’s musical arsenal, seemingly able put out a continuous flow of perfect 3 minute pop rock. They’re sufficiently well know that describing their sound is probably a little redundant (and far from easy - the gap between, say, Dreaming of You and Find a Feeling is pretty massive), sufficed to say they sound better up close! Catch them live if you can.