Kevin Bronson on March 16th, 2019

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“We’re popping our show cherry,” guitarist Chloe Chaidez exclaimed gleefully to the crowd at the sold-out Moroccan Lounge on Friday night.

It was an obvious quip in a short 30 minutes of obvious moments at the live debut of Nasty Cherry. To review, Nasty Cherry is the made-for-social-media (or maybe a made-for-Girl-Cult-Podcast) quartet of singer Gabby Bechtel, (spotted in January in Galore magazine) guitarist Chaidez (the Kitten frontwoman) bassist Georgia Somary and drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson. They are the brainchild of Charli XCX, a co-writer on their songs, who signed Nasty Cherry to her Vroom Vroom Recordings imprint.

Before the coming-out party, they had released but one single, “Win,” with which they closed Friday night’s show.

Highlights and lowlights from the much-hyped show:

■ Chaidez is a show-stealer, which you knew already if you’ve ever witnessed her band Kitten. Whether she was engaged in some nifty shredding or engaging the crowd, she was the only person in the house Friday night (except maybe the hard-working camera crew assigned to document the show) who brought high energy.

■ The cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” was rote at best, and as the second song of the set it came off as a hollow appeal for cred.

■ The grinding “Music With Your Dad” was the other highlight in the eight or-nine-song set. (We think one verse went: “Don’t stay up too late, baby / It’s really not that bad / I’m just in the garage / making music with your dad.”)

■ Playing to Instagram fans is great, but six months of woodshedding wouldn’t hurt Nasty Cherry at all. Or a two-month van tour supporting some ground-level band like Illuminati Hotties.

■ The show was over early enough that, after a quick hop across downtown, one could catch the truly original Jesika von Rabbit.