A cold and wet Tuesday night saw the return of psychedelic indie rock stalwarts The Coral for a sold out gig at Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms. After a five-year hiatus the band were returning to promote the release of the newly released album A Distance Inbetween.

The band started with the lead single from their new album, Miss Fortune, and continued with a further four songs from A Distance Inbetween. The audience took a while to warm to these new songs, understandable as the album was only released four days previously.

Bassist Paul Duffy urged the crowd to get more involved and they duly obliged once the band played some better known songs. The band was backed by a visual backdrop of various trippy, psychedelic images which perfectly accompanied the band’s mix of psychedelic, indie and folk rock. The audience came alive for the band’s biggest hits, such as ‘In The Morning’, but mainly the audience state was one of respectful appreciation instead of fevered excitement. The musicianship from the band was top notch; ex-Zuton’s guitarist Paul Molloy was particularly impressive.

Nevertheless, they didn’t really seem to connect with the audience which might explain the audience’s muted reaction. They ended their set with a great rendition of ‘Calendars and Clocks’ and performed an encore of extended psychedelic jams of ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Fear Machine’, as well as an electric version of ‘Dreaming of You’. Overall, the performance of the band was a musical tour de force, but the band’s effort with the audience left something to be desired.