Greg’s take: I was happy that Myspace was granting us a second, more notable secret show than the Circa Survive thing. I mean c’mon, other cities got Smashing Pumpkins and Decemberists… And nothing was necessarily bad about the show, just nothing really good about it. I agree with most of Alex’s much more detailed take. Meligrove was middle-of-the-road, clean but simple mall-fodder indie pop-rock. What more could you expect from a Myspace-sponsored show? Tokyo Police Club were highly polished, but the “wow” factor that was expected to keep consistent with the hype was non-existent. Their music elicited merely a “that’s really nice” response. It was a free show, so I don’t really have any room to complain; if I had paid though, all bets would’ve been off.

Alex’s take: Coming out of the Tokyo Police Club “Myspace Secret Show” at the Talking Head Club last night I found myself thinking Aural States had committed its first major blunder—we got caught up in the hype surrounding a show that probably didn’t deserve as much attention as it got.

Upon receiving the announcement for the show, I was giddy with what I thought was fresh-and-breaking knowledge. Enough to make me forget my original opinion of Tokyo Police Club—a band that makes decent, though completely unremarkable indie pop songs a la mtvU. I had succumbed to dangerous Internet group-think (read: retardation), combined with a music blogger’s fear of missing fodder for snide comments fired at a distance. Read the rest…