The Coral talk new single ‘Wild Bird’ and recruiting Cillian Murphy and John Simm for two albums

nme.com:

The Coral have shared their cinematic string-laden new single ‘Wild Bird’ – and spoken to NME about how Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy and Life On Mars lead actor John Simm hooked up with the band for not one, but two albums in 2023.Inspired by the dusty desert landscapes of ’60s Italian spaghetti westerns, the band’s 11th studio album ‘Sea Of Mirrors’ finds the Liverpool five-piece crafting their own “surreal” gun-slinging soundtrack.“I was watching this documentary about Italian westerns and I liked this idea that they were a vehicle for creativity,” frontman James Skelly told NME. “I thought I’d love to use that medium to make an almost surreal western, but as if [late Italian director Frederico] Fellini had directed it.

I just liked that idea of sort of taking a genre and using it for whatever you want.”He continued: “I was also thinking about all the AI stuff.

In a way that’s what we do anyway we go, ‘I’d like to hear this, mixed with this and hear what that would sound like’ because the thing you want doesn’t exist.

So you try and make it yourself.”As for his thoughts on artificial intelligence in a wider context, following the recent emergence of an AI-generated “lost” Oasis album and a mash up of The Beatles performing songs by The Beach Boys, Skelly said: “That’s a conversation where I’d need to know more about it.