Whatever the UK may think about The Coronas [Twitter/Facebook], Ireland had them first, and so, in my position, it’s rather difficult not to approach this review from the perspective of a man who’s lived with them since Heroes or Ghosts was released in 2007. I’ve been aware of them for 5 years, but Closer to You is actually the first Coronas record I’ve heard in full. All I’ve known about them up until now is that they write some damn good singles, and none more so than the two we’ve had off the new record so far: the propulsive Mark My Words and the ridiculously catchy Addicted to Progress, which is about as ubiquitous over here as it is possible for a song to get.
They’re far more than a singles band, however. While their earnest pop-rock won’t go over well with everyone (there’s a bit of a saturated market for this sort of stuff in the UK, after all), there is a hell of a lot on Closer to You that will strike a chord with the public at large. Far more than just having the potential for mass appeal, it’s a very good album in its own right. The singles are given a startling new context; Mark My Words arrives after the appropriately surprising album opener What You Think You Know, in which Danny O’Reilly and co. actually rock out. I didn’t know they could do that. See what I mean about their singles only being half the story?
One thing the four Dubliners (O’Reilly, Dave McPhillips, Graham Knox and Conor Egan) can feel particularly proud of is that they know how to write superb hooks. Each of the 11 songs present on their third album (the follow-up to 2009’s Tony Was an Ex-Con) has the potenial to get firmly lodged inside the listener’s head. They doesn’t mess about; the title track, both parts of Dreaming Again (one a mid-tempo waltz, the other a blues-tinged number that kickstarts the album’s stunning final third) and Write to Me (containing one of the most swoon-worthy melodies I’ve heard all year) are all top-drawer material.
Of course, there’s a ballad or two here and there; stuff like that is what the band have already proven themselves to be best at, and yet another example of this is Closer to You‘s penultimate track Different Ending, which takes an already-high standard of writing and raises it to superb levels. It is left to the powerful Make It Happen to close an album that will be just the ticket for a great many people. It turns out that mostly everything I knew about this band was wrong. It’s hard to break out of the Irish scene, but The Coronas are a huge deal over here, and if they can do even half as well overseas, than it’s surely mission accomplished. Best of luck, guys.
Closer to You is out now via Blix Street.
