Over the past few weeks I’ve been re-listening to The Coral’s 2003 release Magic & Medicine, their second record best known for the hit single “Pass It On.” Unquestionably a brilliant example of The Coral’s ability to create perfect singles, it’s also best heard in the context of the album, alongside self-doubt, insanity and suicide; the perfectly integrated opposites of abundant melody and lyrical dissonance that make the record work so well. “Pass It On” isn’t the only perfect pop offered on the album – indeed there’s at least 3 other contenders for most tuneful song – but the ominous mood pervading the recording makes it impossible to simply call this a pop record.
Indeed, the eerie thread running throughout manages to immerse even those poppy tunes in a sense of nostalgic despondence. The haunted vibe is established immediately with the sylvan beauty of “In The Forest,” a bleak song closer to a gothic romance than a love song. By the middle of the album the atmosphere has been made definite, “Secret Kiss” sharing a similar mood to the opening track, co-opting the prominent organ but positioning it within a basic pop song structure. Following these is the probable stand-out “Bill McCai,” probably the catchiest single ever written about a white collar worker’s suicide.
While it is absurdly reductionist to divide an album’s songs by mood, in this case it’s also basically impossible. Here, the “happy” songs and the “sad” songs run into one another, every upbeat melody undercut with regret and tortured nostalgia – see “Liezah,” one of the most perfectly-crafted pop songs on the album, but also the most pained (see the twist at the end, as our narrator tells us “every time I think of Liezah/I break down and I start crying/Although she tore me apart/There’s still a place for that girl in my heart”). Melded to a rustic combination of bass and acoustic guitar, the results are irresistible.
With all this in mind, the reasons why Magic & Medicine isn’t highly-regarded seem implausible. There is a particular tendency to fob it off as The Coral’s in-between album; the one after the crazed experimentation of the debut and the coming stylistic maturity of 2005’s The Invisible Invasion. While it is true that it lies between the two, this is almost certainly a good thing – there is a cohesion The Coral lacked, the songs are better crafted (and less prone to descend into Cossack dance insanity) but at the same time have the imagination and restlessness downplayed on The Invisible Invasion. The other, more obvious criticism is that the album has its share of filler and lower quality songs that keep it from being a classic. Admittedly, the first few times I listened I had much the same opinion. The years and hundreds of listens since then have caused me to re-evaluate that opinion radically, (although I will concede that I’m still not a fan of “Confessions Of ADDD,” the anti-climatic closer) recognizing the subtle touches and effects in those I hadn’t appreciated before. While it would be moronic to term those “difficult” tracks as being objectively “growers,” that was certainly the case with me.
Magic & Medicine is not, and will never be widely acclaimed. Viewed as neither an outright disaster or as a monumental classic, it occupies the critical middle-ground, the equivalent of I Should Coco or Expecting To Fly – in this zone the transition to the status of all-time great is impossible. In a way, this seems only fitting – even The Coral have long since moved on – due in part to the point it occupies in the band’s evolution and its fairly sinister themes. Right now I wish The Coral would revert to the indie-psych-folk-country-blues-pop-etc sound of old, rather than the scaled-down indie that characterised latest release Roots & Echoes. Listening to Magic & Medicine could make anyone wish the same.
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