The Shins Live
By: Phil Roveto |
Saturday April 28, 2007 |
| San Francisco |
| The Shins. Just an amazing performance tonight by the
Albuquerque-raised, Portland-honed band that currently serves as our
modern-day Simon and Garfunkel. If that last part makes you nauseous
or even concerned, read on, because this is the crux of where the
Shins are currently at, and where they could possibly be going.
Tonight at the Warfield, in the sweet and pungent funkor of San
Francisco's Tenderloin, The Shins showed those in attendance why they
are one of the greatest bands in the country right now. Their new
album, Wincing the Night Away, while not wholly complete, has
ample evidence of their determined drive to continue what has been a
magical extended run of combined Pop Talent and Folk Honesty. In
fact, during a break in the show, an outrageous but tremendously
honest shout echoed from the rafters. "HEY!! I REALLY ENJOY YOUR
MUSIC'S CONSISTENCY!!!" The band was laughingly at a loss. So was
the majority of the crowd. Whether the guy was being congratulatory
or a complete asshole was unclear, and essentially no one took it to
heart. Yeah, it's certainly true that the public tends to dramatically
undervalue the difficulty of sustained excellence. People (especially
young folks) want to be shocked with new styles every day, every
second if at all possible. But, in truth, consistency (even
consistently amazing music) isn't going to be what changes this band's
fortunes. It will be the fact that they are becoming deafeningly
ubiquitous in the general public's musical culture. This brings up an
important point. How popular is too popular for you? If the majority
lovingly embraces something, do you join in or put on your contrarian
cap?
Adding to the issue, The Shins are so stunningly brilliant, that they're pulling people from far outside their Garden State-crowd's age group. I can't tell you how many forty-somethings I saw in the crowd. No shame in that, I suppose. During the concert's late stages, I saw a conservative-sweater wearer clap along enthusiastically. Some younger chaps smirked back at him, quelling the poor bastard's honest expression of enjoyment almost immediately. Typical too-cool-for-school bullshit. The fact remains that with each passing day, this band is showing themselves to be less the spokesmen of youth "indie" culture and more the established experts of modern music, displaying all the lessons of sonic past, while twisting them into their own slick designs. This doesn't mean that they've lost anything. No, no, by any means. They've just got serious mainstream popularity. And when you've achieved that, there's a very fine line between awesome, mellowly-smooth indie rock and KBLA 97.3 FM, Easy Listening. I'm sorry to say it, because I've got some die-hard Shins Pride. I found my hometown band to feature some otherworldly talent, and a collective effort that belied a 2nd-of-three-nights showing on a Tuesday. The Warfield was appropriately filled with heavy smoke, billowing down from the stage and up from the floor. As The Shins opened with their dreamy "Sleeping Lessons," soft blue clouds drifted into the faces of the agape crowd, watching separate spotlights illuminate different Shins members for what seemed like 20 minutes until the song caught fire, with red embers curling around James Mercer's scarecrow-like visage as he belted out "And OFF with their heads!" The Shins played their newest single, the fantastic "Australia," with the same intensity and variation that I'd heard on plastic. Not that I was disappointed. This is one of the best songs I've heard all year. Full of the kind of jump that you could only hope for on your brightest days, when you're feeling fine, goddamn sunny, and full of flight. Regardless of what kind of mood you're in, a song like this improves it by at least 33%. And certainly, one of the biggest reasons is Mercer's twisting voice. There are plenty of other reasons why this band is amazing, but like Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, Mercer has The Unique Voice, one that swells, dips, and swerves. Crazy, you can get serious motion sickness by way of his melodic turns. Yeah, other factors might have contributed to my fragile equilibrium tonight, but a voice like that just has an exciting way of turning your stomach. "Kissing the Lipless" jolted the crowd with exuberant bursts before settling into extended echoing guitars with xylophone stars. True to Shins form, they were alternately serious and overtly cutesy. "Girl Inform Me" displayed some classic, pouty lyrics and 60s folk sensibility. Mercer's voice, while talented, can sound like it belongs in a naively passionate 16 year old. This yelping sound can make almost every Shins song to be far more uniformly adorable or poppy than I believe they would like to present. An encore version of "Gone for Good" was a complete crowd pleaser. It's a fantastic country ballad, but I had to wonder how much better it would've sounded with someone like Beck, or Calexico's Joey Burns behind the mike. It's where a little too much consistency might take a bite out of 'em. Along with a stellar cover or Pink Floyd's "Breathe" (Can anyone say 'Pink Floyd Revival?' Seems like everyone's jumping back on that train. Interesting.) the extra set featured some significant virtuosity that really surprised me. They've always been mellow and thoughtful, but tonight showed some gravity and depth that makes me feel they'll be stars for at least a couple of decades instead of just a couple of years. The question is whether you stick with this steadily swelling bandwagon, or politely step off, regardless of whether you've enjoyed the ride or not. The Shins no longer belong solely to the marketed indie demographic, but to a larger scene, affecting people in all directions. Hopefully, the fans from the beginning won't see this as a dilution of admiration or as image abandonment. But if they do, hey, "emo's" still a hot sell. Package that disillusionment and make your own group, trendsters. The Warfield San Francisco, CA April 17th, 2007 |
