Paint is an apt name for this band. In fact I think they should be re-named. ’Watching Paint Dry’ is the most obvious one that springs to mind.

They are a five-piece band, two members hail from Coventry, Barry Jones (bass) and Rob Hill (drums). As soon as they took to the stage, they succeeded in clearing the Hand of Heart of young people, leaving the older, supposedly discerning members of the audience to an hour of boredom.

The charismatically challenged lead singer stared fish-eyed at the ceiling for most of the set. I can only imagine that there must have been an excitingly shaped gob-rocket stuck up there. His thin reedy, complaining vocals did nothing to enhance the musical mix, of acid jazz like rhythms and competently workman-like tenor sax and flute interludes.

‘Who am I to be lying here wasting my time, Who am I’, whimpered the vocalist at one point. Why is it that some musicians think that their particular boring journey of self-discovery is going to be interesting to others? Sade might be able to sell this kind of moody music, but this guy can’t. I’d be surprised if he could sell a fan-heater to a person dying of hypothermia!

Obvious reference points are Portishead and Massive Attack, but whereas these bands have creative ideas and are always expanding their horizons (and their presence in my CD collection), Paint appears to be hell-bent on shrinking theirs.

Fortunately, Paint mainly performs in Europe. I can imagine that this music would probably go down well among the arty, pseudo-intellectual set, in a smoky coffee bar in Holland and Switzerland, but it failed to ignite a more discriminating Coventry audience.

Some of the band lives in Amsterdam, so maybe if they lay off too much of the ‘waccy-baccy’, a few songs without quite so much navel-fluff introspection would be on offer.

I commend their attempt at the difficult art of playing ‘atmospheric’ music, but unfortunately Paint has more in common with the hole in the ozone layer. This is vacuous music with absolutely no soul. When you find yourself studying the lovely colour (a muted shade of turquoise) of the lead guitarist’s Fender Telecaster, then you know you’re bored!