Grant McPhee takes a trip into the hauntological landscape of ‘Throat’, the new collaborative record from The Lost Brothers’ Mark McKowski and The Coral’s Nick Power.
The Coral may be the closest we have to a 21st Century Big in Japan, the (genuinely) legendary post-punk outfit that spawned a plethora of mind-bogglingly talented off-shoots.
While The Coral ‘mothership’ attains critical and commercial success under its own right it’s a testament to the group’s membership that such a huge, varied and perhaps magnificent series of solo projects have recently beamed down from it: Paul Molloy, Ian Skelly and most recently, Iechyd Da from ex-member Bill Ryder-Jones. The abundant talent that emanates from The Coral is truly remarkable and, amazingly only seems to grow with each solo and band release. And now comes this latest project, this time from keyboard player Nick Power alongside Irish producer and songwriter, Mark McKowski with their gloriously dark Throat project. It’s important to know this is a joint project so should not be viewed as simply another Coral off-shoot.
It would be simple to expect this to resemble the tightly structured psych-tinged guitar pop which Liverpool excels at. However, rather than buoyant lysergic jangle this feels more akin to a woozy unreleased Searchers album had they experimented with henbane and early synthesisers; all floaty with half-waking eldritch drones and a sense of foreboding supernatural dread. This is a seriously dark record that conjures up a menacingly brooding and ancient England.
It may make use of the in-vogue H and F words – Hauntology and Folk-Horror – but thankfully moves away from the Ghostbox template. While many fantastic records follow this, it has now become quite difficult for so many such works to exist in a world full of similarity and often, a formula that’s just a tad overdone these days. Throat is certainly not one of them.
A common issue I have with music described as ‘hauntology’ is the dynamic range. It’s one thing to create atmosphere with analogue blips, drones and so on but quite another to take the listener on a journey, and in my experience this really is due to a lack of cohesion, progression and concept which leads to an overall unsatisfying listening experience. Not that this is a concept album by any means, but it does have an overall vision which is why I think it works so well. It’s a remarkably cohesive work with subtle variety in its sequencing which is ultimately satisfying enough to provide enjoyable repeated listening.
What works remarkably well and elevates this above many other ‘Hauntology’ albums is the underlying quality of songwriting and production. Second track, ‘One’ is a quite beautiful slow ballad. Texturally, the acoustic guitar interweaves remarkably well with the oppressive production. Subsequent track ‘The Master’ bleeds in with a kaleidoscopic mix of nursery nightmare exotica and it’s this sequencing which elevates this work.
Of course, while this album is Coral linked, this shouldn’t mean it has to adhere to a Coral aesthetic, whatever that means – this after all is the co-creation of Mark McKowski too and incorporates his clearly impressive skillset and background in production, as well as soundtracks. Together, their combined backgrounds merge into a successful joint work. It’s an often hugely successful mix, such as the beauty of ‘Nick Power’s Dream’, and the ominous, static, panic inducing soundscape of ‘New Brighton Speedway Fire’.
This is a really special album that’s often challenging to listen to, but like many such albums is hugely rewarding.
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‘Throat’ by Nick Power and Mark McKowski is out on 4th October on Deltasonic. Pre-order or pre-save for streaming here.
Grant McPhee is the director of films including the music documentaries ‘Big Gold Dream’, which tells the story of Scotland’s post-punk scene, and ‘Teenage Superstars’, a film about the Glasgow independent music scene between 1982 and 1992. He is the co-author of ‘Hungry Beat: The Scottish Independent Pop Underground Movement (1977-1984)’, published in 2022 by White Rabbit Books, and the author of ‘Postcards from Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983-1995’, published earlier this year by Omnibus Press.