Eliza and the Bear @ The Deaf Institute, Manchester, 22 Mar

A band can do nothing wrong: can play all of the hits, have an audience eating out of the palm of their hands; be a band, furthermore, that you would admit to liking music by... and still suck. Such is the fate of Eliza and the Bear when they play The Deaf Institute tonight.

The lads mount the stage much like the stars of Richard Linklater’s recent movie Everybody Wants Some!! – cocksure, brim-full of piss and vinegar, smiling, swaggering, just, you know, excited to be there. And the audience lose their collective shit. 'Let me take you higher, let me take you higher, let me take you higher,' frontman James Kellegher sings before a rapid-fire burst of horns and you look about you, at the guitars, at the drums, and you wonder – from whence did the horns spring? And then you think maybe it isn’t horns, maybe it’s a keyboard effect – but still, there’s no keyboard on the stage. Ah, you think, backing track...

But never mind the backing track (although it bugs you for the rest of the night, every time you pick out something that isn't actually being performed in front of you). The band shift from Higher to Where Have You Been and you notice that the crowd is making the floor of The Deaf Institute bounce. This is a small upstairs room in a pub. This is not the Ritz. And yet the floor is bouncing. Eliza and the Bear couldn’t be more excited to play: it's like watching a band created on Blue Peter, or accidentally stumbling into a Busted gig. Nothing bad, we sense, has ever happened to Eliza and the Bear. This is the kind of music you would expect three-year-olds hopped up on sugar to make. In other words, giddy as fuck.

Lion’s Heart is met with an almighty whoop, as is Kids in Love. Brief dalliances with AC/DC and Queen are met with uproarious approval. The band can quite literally do no wrong. And yet it’s all a bit one note. This is pop music. Ephemeral. Disposable. Bad for your teeth. You want to tell them to calm down a bit, to drag a song out for more than three minutes, to cut loose. To make a noise that would qualify in any way as discordant. Maybe it’s still early days. We get the sense these guys will be massive on the festival circuit, that their songs will soundtrack a hundred hungry teenage kisses.

By the time they hit Friends, you would think there had never been a song in history that so perfectly epitomised this moment. The kids were very definitely in love. Except for this big kid who harrumphed and grumped off home.