Time to Die is not the most inviting album title, and the Dodos were just as hard to cosy up to here, midway through a brief UK tour promoting their new record. This San Francisco-based trio are highly proficient craftsmen who make their British psych-folk-indie contemporaries seem like have-a-go amateurs, but their skill is best appreciated in recorded form rather than live. Here, their intricate songs tended to sound like self-absorbed diddling.

Bush Hall's soggy sound didn't help. This kind of heads-down complexity demands crystalline acoustics rather than a room that blurs the interplay between guitar, drums and vibraphone, and turns Meric Long's vocals into something you might hear on an underwater documentary. But the group were their own worst enemies: standing on a half-lit stage, each musician too deep in concentration to acknowledge the audience, they dealt with three albums' worth of material by playing the dullest and least familiar pieces.

Things did however begin intriguingly with Paint the Rust – vibes player Keaton Snyder shadowed drummer Logan Kroeber in a kind of percussion two-step, while Long pitilessly thrashed an acoustic guitar. But the band subsequently settled into a groove and didn't budge for the next hour. Despite occasional spicy moments such as Two Medicines' fierce guitar/drums face-off or the flashy finger-picking intro to Jodi, there wasn't enough variety to keep things interesting.

As they wound up, the Dodos had a bit of fun with a showdown on the alt-country Acorn Factory, Long twanging his guitar and Kroeber ka-booming in reply. Here, at last, was something completely off the beaten track – scant reward, though, for an hour of earnest beigeness.