The fabulous ’60s refuse to die. Try to hearken back to a time before Dylan and Lennon and McCartney re-invented the art of songwriting and hitmakers could still get by with “maybe-baby” and “you-true” rhymes. The Coral remember that time, and it writes the songs to prove it. Magic and Medicine, the followup to the band’s eponymous 2002 debut, finds the new generation of Liverpudlians milking 1965 for all it’s worth. Unfortunately, the vision of 1965 they conjure up is the world of Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers—innocuous, lightweight Hallmark verses set to three chords and a backbeat. I’m telling you now, and I’m telling you right away; I was there, and this shite was bad enough the first time.
Plundering their mum’s and dad’s record collections, the brothers Skelly (James and Ian) and their cohorts find inspiration in those countless ’60s songs that never rose to Top 40 prominence, the days when an album consisted of two singles and eight or nine versions of interchangeable filler. There are echoes of British Invasion stalwarts everywhere—The Yardbirds on “Talkin’ Gypsy Market Blues,” The Animals on “Don’t Think You’re the First,” The Kinks on “Bill McCai,” and yes, Gerry and the Pacemakers on “Secret Kiss” and Freddie and the Dreamers on “Liezah,” which manages the very Freddie-like feat of rhyming “Liezah” and “despise her.” But it’s almost all filler and no hits; only the single “Pass It On,” with its Beatlesque guitar coda, has anything substantial to offer. There’s far too little magic, and this medicine tastes like castor oil.
To be sure, it’s all authentic enough. Skelly has the pre-Dylan lyrical gift down pat, and on “Eskimo Lament” he sings, “Rain, rain go away /Come back on a better day,” while “Careless Hands” finds our protean poet extolling the wonders of “sugar and spice/And all things nice.” It’s all wonderfully evocative of the Liverpudlian hackery that was rampant at the time when there couldn’t be enough Beatles knockoffs, but if you’re going to be derivative, it might be groovy to aim for something higher than the cute little maxim at the base of a Precious Moments figurine. The historical accuracy continues right on through the concluding track, “Confessions of A.D.D.D,” which wraps up with an extended three minute pre-psychedelic jam that has everything but the Shindig Go Go dancers. Such a meticulous re-creation of an era is worth something, I suppose. About $0.49, which is what a good single would cost you back in 1965.