It’s been an excruciatingly long wait for the UK fans of Sky Ferreira. The elusive LA singer last performed here back in 2014! This year, she made a comeback as part of Grace Jones-curated Meltdown festival on 16th June.

Those who turned up for her 10:30pm gig, tightly filled the Queen Elizabeth Hall in anticipation – but were in for a shock. Ferreira took to the stage at just about the time she was supposed to be finishing, minutes shy of midnight! Well, night time is her time…

She greeted the audience with a dry “Hi”, looking down, perhaps annoyed at whatever it was that caused the delay. But once she kicked it off with “24 Hours”, the fans forgot how long they’d been melting down in the steamy auditorium. Ferreira went through the 15-track set without speaking much in between songs. She barely smiled, maintaining her “laconic cool” persona. Scarce stage lighting almost reduced her to a silhouette, an enigmatic apparition in haze.

The show was a fan’s dream come true, even if at times Sky’s vocals were almost inaudible. Hopefully just a technical sound problem, not a throat infection… Clearly audible, though, were song requests from the audience. But she didn’t sing neither “One” nor “Obsession”, instead drawing mainly from her only LP to date, the highly acclaimed and already iconic Night Time, My Time. Even more exciting were songs from the long-delayed follow-up Masochism, including the brilliant recent single “Don’t Forget”, and “Innocent Kind”, first premiered live only days before. Yet “Downhill Lullaby”, although a very atmospheric ballad, sounded slightly out of place in this fast-paced set.

She threw in a couple of covers: ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” and Tamaryn’s “Hands All Over Me”, before a rocky version of “Everything Is Embarrassing” closed the set. Only at this point did Sky walk down from the stage and truly interacted with the audience, shaking hands with a few lucky people in the first row. After that, the singer and her band (Jorge Elbrecht and Tim Koh on guitars, Cameron Allen on drums) disappeared backstage. Though appetite for more was huge, an encore never happened.

The show was part of Ferreira’s turbulent European summer tour. Just a few days before, her Primavera Sound performance in Spain was marred by technical problems. Several weeks later, her gig at the Open’er Festival in Poland was almost cancelled because of torrential rain… With Capitol Records still sabotaging her career by withholding a finished album, things are looking bleaker than ever before. But when Masochism eventually arrives, it will be with a cult status.

Setlist: “24 Hours”, “Boys”, “Don’t Forget”, “You’re Not the One”, “Downhill Lullaby”, “I Blame Myself”, “Ain’t Your Right”, “I Will”, “Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)”, “Heavy Metal Heart”, “Voices Carry”, “Innocent Kind”, “Hands All Over Me”, “Descending”, “Everything Is Embarrassing”