The Coral

NME Stage, 8pm, Sunday

As the sun goes down drunken sprits rise up. Amidst this bawdy revelry The Coral's moment arrives. In the hour of the gloaming, shrouded in the elegiac half light, they conjure visions of pirates and the ocean deep, their jerking silhouettes projected onto the backing screen, huge, angular and ghostly. The stage is wreathed in smoke, drifting like sea mists - salt is on the air and on the tongue.

For these are strange times and this is a strange and magical band and when the weird mystery of Calendars and Clocks drifts in and takes hold it's like nowhere else on the planet. You see this bunch of preternaturally gifted kids from the San Francisco of England's North got some breathtaking alchemy going. Take the unsettling 'Simon Diamond', a scouse 'Under Milk Wood' set to a Beefheart / 'Crystal Ship' Doors soundtrack: a beguiling and intoxicating psychedelic stew.

But there are lows. The reaction to the slow tempo songs, from the new album, is strangely muted. Fear not though friends, cos spirits rise again upon the arrival of populist sing-alongs 'Pass it On' and 'Dreaming of You' – which Skelly announces will not be heard live again for quite some time.

'Goodbye' closes, or rather the 20 minute instrumental freakout which it devolves into does. A glimpse of real power - 'Endless Nameless' with barnacles on, if you please.

David Gray continues to play to tens of thousands on the V Stage – the fools!

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