If you feel the need to feign a vibrato, you may as well become a professional air guitarist.

Unfortunately, this was a nuance amongst many others that was lost on the hopelessly pretentious members of a band named 'Moonraker' tonight. I guess I should have put two and two together when I noticed that both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald presented positive reviews of them. Nevertheless, I suspended my disbelief and forked out the cover charge to go see this supposedly 'hip' show.

The opening act, 'The So & So's' performed a melange of pandering commercial ballads and cliche 'angry girl music'. At least they were honest about it. For that sole reason, their set attracted a sizable crowd of vapid overgrown teenie-boppers.

But then 'Moonraker' took the stage and the mass exodus began. I have never seen, to date, so many people walk out in the middle of a set as I did tonight. They had good reason to do so.

By combining the worst of Portishead vocals, mediocre prog-rock keyboard fills and generic electronic cheese, this hapless quintet created an utterly insipid and uninspiring sonic aura. The female vocals were exhaustingly invariant and the guitar sounded like a token overdub thrown in for no good reason. I was bored to tears.

Note to self: In future, be more diligent in your research before going to a show.