Power Out: The Coral On Tour

Nick Power writes for Clash...

For most fans, the touring life seems like a dream: the endless open road only punctuated by spells onstage performing to adoring fans.

The reality, though, can often be somewhat different. The Coral returned earlier this year, with the much-cherished band delivering new album 'Distance Inbetween'.

As fine a piece of psych-speckled pop as you're likely to encounter in 2016, the record has been supported by lengthy spells on the road.

Multi-instrumentalist Nick Power has kept a tour diary on his travels – check out an instalment below.

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Here I am waiting by the side of the stage midway through a set at Liverpool Sound City. The festival sits at the side of the River Mersey at the Bramley Moore dock. There are the ghosts of the old working port everywhere you look; granite clock towers and vast empty warehouses. Steel moorings jut out of the harbourside, and beyond those, the grand vista of Liverpool Bay and the Irish Sea.

We arrive late, around 8pm, and the bright sun has begun to shallow. We mooch about backstage, do the odd interview, nurse a beer or two. It's a headline gig but the mood is relaxed- we've done enough touring this year to feel confident.

About fifteen minutes into the performance, during the instrumental break of Connector, the power cuts on stage. A flash of pure darkness and then a silence. Up until then we'd been flying. Supercharged. It's a shame really, as there was a palpable sense of something building. Still, the audience stay put in the pitch- black dock and sing our songs amongst themselves, almost willing the dud generator back into life. It's quite a thing to see, this dark mass of people swaying like an ocean, flanked by the silver river and these huge silhouetted container cranes behind it all. Pockets of mobile phone lights popping up intermittently like will-o'- the-wisp. It's turned into some strange inverted victory.

Earlier in the day we'd soundchecked under a clear sky of azure blue. The weather couldn't have been better. The dock was quiet then, in the bright morning, dust settling on the previous nights celebrations. Huge yellow JCB diggers collected rubbish into piles while uniformed barmaids watched from faraway benches as we picked our way through the set. Some of us even received texts from relatives who could hear us way over the Mersey in New Brighton. We were the only sound on the river, save for the odd passing freight container foghorning its way out of port.

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In front of me, I can see engineers and technicians running frantically to and from the stage. A front loader hauls the huge wounded generator toward a substation at the edge of a wet dock. It looks like a patient being rushed into accident and emergency. A pair of jump leads are produced to try and resuscitate the thing and resume the gig. The place is in a panic.

Ten minutes later the power surges back into life. A bright ricochet of light pings back from the audience and the sky turns from tar black into a kind of haunted indigo, and suddenly we're back on stage, ploughing through the set. We finish to a humbling applause and it feels like something's been pulled back from the brink.

It's my birthday as of midnight tonight. I come off stage and am still pretty flummoxed by the power cut. I see my girlfriend and a few mates walking in my direction singing me happy birthday. I'm not in such a good mood though, so I skulk off behind one of the cabins for a smoke, feeling bad about it all. People are milling out of the festival onto the long Regent Road now, walking toward town or trying to hail cabs. It's a good atmosphere, as it turns out, and we follow the swarm of bodies toward the pubs and bars. As for the short-circuit, the festival organisers are calling it a sabotage, an act of vandalism, but no-one seems to really know what went on. After that, I haven't much of a recollection as it was half past midnight before we got off stage and I was pretty drunk by then. I kept drinking until noon the next day, apparently.

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