To have survived as a working unit over the past 24 months with the name they have is some achievement for The Coronas, but — almost 20 years from when they formed — a panic room doesn’t seem to be their destination. Time Stopped is their seventh album and it’s fair to say that their first three (2007′s Heroes or Ghosts, 2009′s Tony Was an Ex-Con, and 2011′s Closer to You) were the work of a band struggling to find their collective feet. They finally hit on something special with 2020′s True Love Waits, an album full of quality melancholic pop songs by musicians who had been waiting in the wings for several years to regenerate like a musical version of Dr Who.

That sense of creative positioning is writ large, also, across Time Stopped. Inevitably, from the album title onwards, a Covid fog covers everything like a coarse cloth. Songs such as Write Our Own Soundtrack, The Best Worrier, At Least We’ll Have LA, the title track, and Take Me With You If You’re Leaving (most of which were written in Dingle during various lockdowns and restrictions) come across as a diary of how best to negotiate the world around you, and those close to you, when everything has been upended. A mature, reflective record from a band that deserves a closer look. thecoronas.net