It was a pleasant surprise, showing up at a Kate Nash gig and seeing Jonathan Boulet opening for her.

Jonathan's band as always put on a good show, minus all the ego. It must be a hard slog however, sporting a beard he looked tired, but they didn't let that hinder the quality and anthemic energy which was as loud as ever.

As expected a few days after Valentine's day, the Metro Theatre was full of couples, seemed like a lot of reluctant boyfriends were duped into the gig. The moment she walked onstage, wearing an enormous red bow on her head, and then proceeded to talk about it for a good while, the girls were lapping it up.

Not to say that it was all negative, but I did like some of the tunes she was playing. She had a confident air about her, conversing frankly with the crowd in between songs, telling a few of the rowdy crowd to shut up when they cat-called her.

One of her first songs I recognised was "Mouthwash", an adorable call to arms for girls everywhere (awww). The crowd responded well to the more upbeat tracks, as you can imagine.

She threw in a few curveballs, mid-way through the set she played a much more grungy sounding tune, which included a spoken monologue about what she perceived to be the "ills of society", which I frankly found to be almost child-like and naive in nature. I mean it's a difficult thing to go from singing songs about break-ups and ex-boyfriends to deeper issues. The crowd didn't really feel it either, but just waited patiently till she played "Foundations".

She held out a bit longer on that front, playing many of the crowd favourites such as "Kiss that Grrl", "Do-Wah-Doo" and "Later On".

I had trouble distinguishing these songs from one another, because they sounded so very similar. Seems as if she's trying to emulate the soul success of artists like Amy Winehouse and Duffy, but it just ended up sounding bland.

Towards the end she played "Foundations", with its ridiculously catchy hooks, causing everyone to tap their feet at the very least, this is what she does best. Not trying to emulate others but sticking to what she's good at. After that was the encore and well, the encore wasn't that great.

With some people leaving the venue quite obviously bored with the proceedings, and others not really sure whether or not to clap, which inevitably led to Kate Nash and her backing band walking back on-stage to lukewarm applause.

I suppose those die-hard fans did have a good time, but I was pretty bored by her performance, songs lacked inspiration and others were just overly soppy.

An adequate Valentine's day gift, but a very lacklustre performance.