US Girls | Time | Heatsick - Cafe Oto, 1 March 2010

On a long low table lies a solitary record. This is the worst merch stand I have ever seen.

Heatsick is one half of Birds of Delay. There is a table with the usual array of wires, keyboards and nameless devices. Given how frequently I see them deployed I really should find out what they are called. He plays scraping sound-scapes. Soundscrapes maybe. There’s a snatch of strings. Some plinking guitar, sawing violin and boring rock moves. Utterly unexceptional.

Why would you call yourself Time? You’re inviting trouble by laying claim to a moniker which implies such conceptual significance. They play as a duo. One plays guitar whilst the other pointlessly flits between violin, bass, piano, maybe another instrument. Time, literally and figuratively, has made me forget. They seem to be trying for a half-formed sketch type vibe, but succeed only in being half-formed attempt at being half-formed. Dire.

I do wonder why I came tonight. I bought US Girls first record and I wasn’t that keen on it. I saw her play live a year ago and didn’t enjoy it. No-one could accuse me of living for pleasure. High-pitched vocals, chanted school playground style over crude electro-beats and pulse. It’s like listening to something down a drain pipe. There’s a strange moment where Sam Cooke’s ‘A change is going to come’ floats out of a static howl. Underwhelming.