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The Shins
At Irving Plaza
Filter Grade: 83%
by Tom Birner | 01.01.2007

Valentine’s Day, New York City: guys hold onto their girlfriends’ hands like flesh trophies while the lovelorn polish their “it’s a commercial holiday” speeches. Deli roses are deemed thoughtful by unchallenged maidens and Hallmark inscriptions ignite modern ennui to suddenly become verse. It’s 9pm and I’m munching heart shaped sugar cookies specially baked by my eager Valentine, hoping my mother (how Freudian) happened to add some strychnine to her usual recipe. But what better medicine than the unaffected levity of indie rock to curb my vital moroseness?

The Shins are of that half hippy, half frat boy brand that get hammered and end up playing the skin drums Wednesday through Sunday night in your dorm. To their credit, their spacey melodies and rustic anti-stardom almost made me forget that my love life is more of a half-life (only radioactive measurements can gauge my rate of success).

Chutes Too Narrow didn’t make my top ten list (not published), but by 12:30am I had partly acknowledged the well-covered Shins affability. James Mercer cradled his undeniably cute little rock project in bubbly acoustic licks on “Pink Bullets” but his vocals are of that inverted whine sort that are sometimes hard to get past. The band’s harmonies are half Beach Boys, half theatrical Who, soaring alongside Mercer’s geeky surf guitar on “Saint Simon.” Marty Crandall was of good-natured Friday spirit, wearing a faded Batman T-shirt and an appreciative grin. He bantered with the crowd, threw candy and washed “Mine’s Not A High Horse” with pretty synthesizers while Mercer played a whiskey laced steel groove on “Gone For Good” that reminded me of Keith Richards when he was alive.

The audience was of the typically well-behaved NYU variety. I was eight beers deep and everyone had nice eyes, but each girl appeared to be caught on a snag, wearing corduroys and white sneakers. It often felt less a concert than a night out, as the rather preppy crowd didn’t shed their inhibitions until the end, rocking out with overcompensating frenzy to “So Says I.” I couldn’t tell if the hipsters were excited by the moderated urgency of Mercer’s sharp riffs or by the increased possibility of copulation at the night’s end.

The Shins have likeable personalities and though possibly innocuous, their playing is well-meaning and fairly complex. Their unabashed dream rock evokes little emotion but with Crandall’s sunny synthesizers drifting in and out of Mercer’s self-effacing guitar licks and brainy lyrics, their music was sometimes wily and just as often something you’d listen to not to notice (homework music). At night’s end I was satisfied yet still thirsty for more booze, self pity and my Morrissey collection.