Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Coral: Butterfly House Acoustic

Here's a problematic review. Not long after I set out on this adventure of a blog, I learned that The Coral (a band I much admire) had just released a new album, Butterfly House, and it was getting very positive notices (after a few tepidly-received releases.) So I promptly placed an order at my store, and long, long after, it arrived. Except it wasn't.

The proper version of Butterfly House was not released here. All they had for me was this stripped-down acoustic version. I was skeptical. Even now it's taken me a long time to sitting down to collect my thoughts on the album. The sound of the album, the constant plucked acoustics and mellow crooning, means it fades into the background not only of your life but of your mind. I found myself hard pressed to remember even the songs I liked hearing. I would remember a snippet here or there and have trouble placing it. But when you hit play it starts to come back.

The 13 songs on this album are, from a songwriting standpoint, among the finest the band has served up. I don't mean to denigrate the band's other releases, but there's a striking difference here. The band left a lot of its manic energy behind after the first few albums, but here I finally get a sense of what path they wanted to take out of it. It's sentimental and delicate and very sweet and honest and accessible. The acoustic guitars overlap and melt sweetly into each other.

The acoustic sound is great. It's not bare or stark sounding at all. It's very lush and well-instrumented. It never feels like a demo or an interpretation, or even close to raw like Nick Drake or something. The album's warmth is helped by some beautiful harmony vocals and James Skelley's strongest overall vocal performance. The songs all take a very innocent, doe-eyed tact toward romantic relationships (and memories and moments) that evokes the 60's as strongly (or stronger) than any of their previous albums. Sometimes on their previous release I'd sense something exciting happening and then they'd take a turn that broke the mood for me, but here's probably their first record I can listen to straight through. And I loved those first ones, and the later ones all have highlights too. While they may have better individual songs on every album, I think no set has been as consistently good.

In researching for this review, I did listen, just once, to the full-out proper versions of these songs. A lot of the tracks translate well. Some, like "Sandhills," "She's Comin' Around" and "North Parade," being most electric-driven, lose something, but also take on a new character. "Coney Island" feels totally different.

None of those songs is worse the wear for the acoustic treatment, but there are a lot of songs here that particularly lend themselves to it. "Walking in the Winter," "Falling All Around You" and "Two Faces" are moments of real beauty. I think the thing about an acoustic album is that our brains are wired to interpret those sounds as being honest, from-the-heart and off-the-cuff statements, unfiltered by studio production (even when they are.) Here, being so exquisitely orchestrated only enhances that feeling, that even peeling back the layers of performance, you still have something very showy and glossy, and very personal at the same time.

Buy the Regular version or Acoustic version from Amazon!





And since the proper album is a bit tough to get a hold of, it's all on YouTube. Here's what we're talking about:

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