The Coral release a cursed carol from the haunted jukebox with their first-ever Christmas single
Long overdue, but so worth the wait.
2 min read
Credit: The Coral 📸
Three decades and twelve albums haven’t offered a single Christmas song from Merseyside psych sorcerers, The Coral, until now. As overdue as the reply from Santa to a lost child’s letter and as cursed as Krampus’ footsteps getting closer in the dead of Christmas night, the filmic five-piece release She Died On Christmas Day, their first new music since 2023’s Top Five album, Sea Of Mirrors.
Preoccupied with the cheery crooners of the mid-20th Century who sang the demise of their lovers and the songwriters who weaved ghoulish tales into chart-bound hits, The Coral’s own mastery of subtly sinister songcraft continues this festive season. Eerily resplendent with fuzzed, fairground announcement vocals and crying lines of dusty ballroom organ, the band’s own, inimitable take on a seasonal single is a brilliant, if burnished bauble of December malcontent.
With a limited edition 7” release available to fans and collectors, titled Christmas On Coral Island, the title track is the last to feature the narration of Ian Murray, also known as The Great Muriarty. Bringing dramatic poise as narrator on both The Coral’s 2022 album, Coral Island and 2023’s ‘spirit broadcast’ of Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show, Ian and James’s Skelly’s late-grandfather ably sets the scene on the A-side.
“We love fifties and early sixties rock n’roll, especially the British stuff,” says the band’s Nick Power. “To us, it’s the sound of where we grew up: New Brighton and the fair, the lost piers, the thrill and danger of towns at the end of existence. If there’s an opening where we get to explore that side of us, we’re always up for it.”
Although The Coral haven’t released any new music for the preceding 11 months of 2025, the band has enjoyed celebratory shows, not least band-curated A Late Summer Night's Scream at a sold out, 3,500-capacity Grand Central venue in Liverpool in August, but also widespread critical and audience approval for the Dreaming Of You, the James Slater-directed film telling the story of the band’s formation.
Purchase your 7” vinyl now.
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