The Coral: Magic And Medicine : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

A contemporary version of Nuggets, the Sixties garage-psych-rock compilation series, might well include a song from British band the Coral. But it wouldn't be a song from this album. Like so many of the flower-power rockers they emulate on Magic and Medicine, the Coral seem to have run out of material after they recorded their debut. Whereas their first CD, 2002's The Coral, folded an unexpected Eastern European folk-music vibe into its psychedelic rock, Magic is little more than mimicry and affectation. The Coral lift from the playbooks of true Sixties weirdos, including Love (on the poncy "Don't Think You're the First" and "Eskimo Lament"), the Seeds ("Talkin' Gypsy Market Blues") and the Music Machine ("Milkwood Blues"). Perhaps most annoying are singer James Skelly's inane rhyming couplets about "birds in the trees" singing "sweet melodies" or a "secret kiss" and "forgotten bliss." Those are nuggets of an unsavory kind.

JENNY ELISCU
(RS 942, February 19, 2004)