Last year, Alex G earned a slightly odd sobriquet: “The internet crush you’ve stalked for months.” It was a reference to the fact that G – real name Giannascoli – put out four albums on the music site Bandcamp, but none on standard release (until last year’s DSU). It was also a reference to his charming persona: Elliott Smith reborn, where minor-key emotions met lo-fi sonic values. Seeing him live, the distance between the artist on record and the one on stage is vast. Gone is the beta male with a penchant for a loud/quiet dynamic and here instead is someone struggling to find his place. The main problem seems to be Giannascoli’s band, who turn everything into a sludge-rock fest, with an out-of-tune bass dominating and a drummer who could learn a thing or two about subtlety and restraint from Animal in the Muppets.

With a set full of songs filled with opaque lyrics and gear-shifting sonics, G scrambles to get his vision across. The dynamic subtleties of songs such as Sorry, with its sinister lyrics (“I’ll get my cure / Wait in the car / I won’t remember who you are”), or Boy – with the Daniel Johnson‑esque delivery of its key line, “I am not the boy you knew” – are lost under a concrete block of sound. Unsurprisingly, the highlight of the show comes when the band finally pipe down. “This is going to be boring as shit,” Giannascoli says by way of introduction, before launching into a solo version of Sarah. Without the dense rock slop, the stop-start relationship at the heart of the song can take centre-stage. As he sings the lines “I can’t be what you need / I am stuck”, you finally feel the bracing chill he so effortlessly brings on record, but which tonight has been sadly lacking.