Post-rock, prog, avant-jazz: Some genres were born nerdy. Cambridge's The Franklin Kite channeled all these styles Saturday at Cholmondley's, blending with mixed results a virtuosic and often adventurous musicianship with pop-rock sensibilities. For the meager crowd, some of which had simply arrived early for the weekly midnight performance by Friends Like These, it was a befuddling evening: Elaborately arranged crescendos dissolved into standard FM-dial fare; songs were constantly interrupted by technical glitches; even between-song banter seemed forced. For The Franklin Kite, it was nearly a disaster.

The set began promisingly enough. Following Boston's Choo Choo La Rouge, multi-instrumentalist John Mileham stood alone on stage, first looping beats produced by an electronic hand drum, then layering ambience and synthscapes with his iBook and organ. As bandmates Ryan Hickox and Daniel Curtis-on guitar and bass, respectively-joined in, the piece began to resemble Chicago-style post-rock Oe la Tortoise.

Had the band continued in this vein, The Franklin Kite might have retained their audience; as it was, Hickox's vocals, which joined the fray after a minute-long build, only aggravated the frustrations of Curtis' constantly failing bass amplifier. Here, his singing cracked and mumbled beneath the surrounding racket, struggling with falsettos as it waxed saccharine.

Perhaps the technical difficulties were for the best. Hickox introduced one number as a 'song about science' in which he celebrated dinosaurs and condemned Intelligent Design. 'Nerd-rock,' indeed: That such embarrassing lyrics were lost beneath a wall of fuzz and canned beats was a saving grace.

Choo Choo La Rouge's set was an entirely different story, reveling in a concoction of My Morning Jacket-derived alt-country and Flaming Lips eccentricities (singer Vincent Scorziello was often a dead ringer for Wayne Coyne at his most acid-damaged.) Here was proof that when in doubt, a distillation of familiar favorites often trumps an experiment in musical disparities.