HA-HA. Remember The Coral, those Scouse scallywags skedaddling over a myriad of musical styles like bedraggled bandits?

Sea shanties, Cossack chants, everything, including kazoos, all manner of gizmos, the wash-board, the dish-water even, and all laced with kitchen-sink drama. That's what graced The Coral's first four albums since the eponymous opener six years ago.

But along with The Coral's kaleidoscope of ideas and innovations often came a sneering accompaniment from snipers snidely remarking how dem der laahs' from Liverpool were just a bit too clever by half. With nothing from them for close on two years, the dastardly detractors may have chuckled inwardly that the seven-piece ensemble had been hoisted by their own envelope-pushing petard.

Well, now they're back - and with an album sounder than a pound, more brill than a brilliantined brilliant thing of brilliance, and as thunderous as a Stevie G cup final rasper.

Where their previously best stab at cohesion on Magic And Medicine was attended by a lack of drive, Roots & Echoes is The Coral at their most together allied to their customary zest and swaying vitality.

It's reminiscent of The Jam's Sound Affects, which restored faith after that trio's initial blaze was lost in confusion.

Fastened to the technical sorcery are pulsating power-chords as on current single and album opener Who's Gonna Find Me and She's Got A Reason, while a battery of ballads such as Put The Sun Back, Jacqueline and Rebecca You are sublime swoon-fests in which vocalist James Skelly has never sounded more assured. But it's the album's closer, Music At Night, where any echo is replaced by a crowning chorus of conquest.