"The spirit of the band, distilled into one track"

Many happy returns to The Coral's self-titled debut, which is celebrating its 20th birthday. I'm not sure what it was that enticed me to dig it out some time last year, but it's been on regular rotation ever since. Two decades on, it remains a remarkable record, especially as the first full-length release from a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears teenagers.

But then perhaps it's a record that only a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears teenagers could make - one that revels in weaving together a dazzling array of disparate influences, from The Beatles to Captain Beefheart to Ennio Morricone; one that is free and unencumbered by any weight of expectation from fans or record company, any stylistic straitjackets, any interest in coherence, any inhibiting sense of "cool". The fact that they were bracketed in with the likes of The Libertines and Razorlight, swept up in the post-Strokes early-00s indie boom, looks increasingly bizarre as time passes - but at least NME's appetite for fresh meat meant that they didn't go unnoticed.

Back in March, the band's frontman James Skelly and Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie, the LP's producer, spoke to the Guardian about 'Dreaming Of You', the eminently hummable single that established them as the natural heirs to The Las and that is for many people their signature song. Skelly recalled how it was written in all of five minutes, following an inspiring meeting with Shack's Mick Head (who was "like the poet laureate of Liverpool then"): "All the hits we've had were done like that, written in about the same time it takes to listen to them. The trick is to leave them alone and not question it."

If the song sounds like an outlier in its surroundings, that's because it is. As Broudie said, "There were sea shanties on the debut album, psych freakouts, spaghetti western soundtrack, all sorts. So I think they were a bit nervous of 'Dreaming Of You', which was much more conventional. It's the only song ... that doesn't have some sort of twist." Thankfully, they were persuaded to not only record it but also include it on the LP. With the benefit of perspective, Skelly is also glad they did: "It's not deep, but its energy makes it special." That much arguably goes for the album as a whole.