The 'Invisible' talent of Coral

There's a joke about Britain's New Music Express: they heap unbelievable praise on every single new band with the hopes that when one of them actually becomes a sensation, they can claim they said it first. The Coral are a great example of this: a bunch of gawky northern English teenagers put out a half-cooked take on 60s psychedelic rock in 2003 and got called the next big thing; American audiences didn't buy it.\nThe Invisible Invasion, the Coral's third album, seems unlikely to change that trend, although it certainly shows musical growth within the group. James Skelly's voice has steadied into a near pitch-perfect imitation of a disinterested, drunk and bloated Jim Morrison. The difference is that Jim Morrison wrote lyrics that were heavily political or pseudo-spiritual, and he at least did it first.\nTracks like the opener "She Sings the Mourning" and "So Long Ago" sound uncannily like the Doors, except they lack the enthusiasm. "The Operator" opens with snappy organ notes in the vein of Ray Manzarek. "A Warning to the Curious," a sleepy, spooky track in its own right, furthers the Doors comparison even more, especially when it fades out into mysterious drums. "In the Morning" is peppered with xylophone and sounds somewhat like early Velvet Underground material, except the lyrics are forgettable. "Something Inside of Me" could easily have been performed by the Turtles or the Kinks, except it wasn't.\n"Arabian Sand," however, is an interesting song that manages to rise above the meandering fluff of the rest of the album. The verse sounds like "Powerman"-era Kinks, the chorus like old Pink Floyd. It's not a bad track -- it's got some frenzied, attention-snapping guitar work -- and at least it's not sleepy. Considering the rest of this album, that's saying a whole lot.\nThe fundamental problem with this album is that there's nothing new to the Coral's schtick. They manage to ape a litany of cool 60s influences that ran their course 20 or so years before the members of this group were born. They're at once the Kinks, the Turtles, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd and the Doors, but those bands all put out stellar, life-changing tracks before they freaked out on acid, got fat, took junk and drowned in the bathtub.\nThese kids are like a karaoke machine's musical track by comparison, but if they suffer the same fate as the bands they shamelessly borrow from, at least we'll be in for a good show.