Amazingly for a band who released their first record in 2001, none of the Coral has yet turned 30. If anything, they look even younger than they are, making the contrast between their still-fresh faces and assured playing that much greater. On the opening night of a short tour to promote their sixth album, Butterfly House, the Wirral fivesome looked like a pack of schoolboys who'd been allowed to have a go on some grown-up band's instruments.

For all their youthfulness – like adolescents, they went out of their way to stare at the floor and mumble when addressing the audience – their heads are full of vintage sounds. This show was all plush vocal harmonies and sweetly twanging guitars; their "cosmic Scouser" phase now long behind them, they're in thrall to Buffalo Springfield and the Everly Brothers these days. Simon and Garfunkel on pep pills also came to mind a couple of times, notably during a quickstep version of the 2002 song Spanish Main. The only proof that we hadn't awakened in 1967 came at the tail end of the evening, when they thrashed the stuffing out of a new one called North Parade. If the Coral harbour an inner Pixies, that was when it emerged, as startlingly as if Kylie Minogue were to suddenly rasp out Hole's Teenage Whore.

Because their skill at pulling together those melt-in-the-mouth harmonies and wistful chords is a given, the songs that stood out were those that diverged from the formula. One such was Falling All Around You, which employed only the soft, folkish voice of frontman James Skelly; another was the Ennio Morricone-ish Wildfire, with its twangy peaks and valleys. The rest, even their biggest hit, Pass it On, was much of a lovely muchness: you went home in a muzzy state of contentment, but the songs were a blur.