THE SHINS

The Shins

A night of hilarity and interestingness. also known as the Shins show.

sorry guys - this is a long one.

So as the story goes, I was very surprised to see tickets on sale for the sunday Shins show on sunday morning. Finally, not sleeping after my show has rewarded me preciously. I got 2 tickets, asked one friend, got yelled at by my other friends for not buying them tickets (hey, they were not cheap). I don't know whether to thank the Shins or ticketweb or some higher power for this nice break up of ticket sales, but to whomever: thanks.

My friend Neal and I got there about an hour early and waited on the line. As it started freezing, we finally got inside. We secured ourselves 2nd row, and as it was a while before the Brunettes scheduled show time, we had time to waste. A lot of my time was wasted looking at the crowd. This was the first non 18+ show I've been to in New York (or since June for that matter) and here you me, it makes a difference. A big difference. We were stationed by 5 high school students. Two of whom were pretty cool, but turned out to be completely insane. I mean, maybe I was a lame high school student, but these guys were crazy. Hilarious and great, but crazy. At one point they were taking swigs from a Dasani water bottle and chasing it with a can of coke they had. I asked them what it was and they said "water." It was clearly not water. They laughed and let me smell it. It smelled like orange soda; apparently it was orange rum.

So we talk it up a little bit, blah blah blah, the Brunettes come out. To summerize: The Brunettes are a band from New Zealand that are, well, awesome. I realized a bit later that I had seen almost all of the band members walking around on the street earlier and slapped myself for the missed opportunity. They started playing a song that I can only imagine is named "baby" or something of that sort because often during the chorus band members would stop playing their various instruments to spell "b-a-b-y" with their arms. it was very ymca. And mind you, these various instruments included guitars, drums, keyboards, saxophones, a banjo, claves, and a clarinet. Yeah, their sound was pretty all over the place.

It was pretty fun dance-type music and the band had a lot of energy. There was only one girl dancing and at one point, one of the women came to the edge of the stage and thanked her for it. The songs were great. The sound kind of exploded from the stage, and it was pretty hard to judge just hearing it for the first time - I'd like to hear a recording because I think it would be pretty good. I felt bad because between the loud sound level and the crazy sound explosion that was happening, I had a hard time getting through their accents and understanding their inbetween banter. from what I heard, it was very nice and somewhat funny. Around the last song, I was fading a little bit - but oh, the Brunettes were ready for that. They had a slight pause during their last song in which almost all the band members turned around to put something on and one of the singers sang "mary kate and ashley..." Of course the whole audience laughed, but we had no idea that while he was singing, the other members were actually putting on mary-kate and ashley masks.

The picture was taken from their full house days and all the eyes were cut out so the band members could see. I was cracking up. I was laughing so hard it was probably alarming to the people around me. Also on stage for this part (complete with masks) were Marty and Neal from the Shins. at one point they put the masks together so it looked like they were kissing. Allinall? fun and hilarious.

As the Brunettes left the stage, the guys in front of us took their last swigs of "water" and coke and after talking to each other for a while, turned to me and said, "hey, do you have a lighter?" after I said I didn't they asked a bunch of other people and some guy next to them ended up having some matches. Their reaction? They pull out a gigantic ziploc bag with 2 microscopic joints in them, pull one out, light it, and start smoking it in front of all of the roadies. Everyone in the crowd around us was looking at them too, as they let all the smoke escape and hacked furiously after almost every hit.

This event caused me to laugh much more.

After some waiting, The Shins came out. They opened smashingly with "Caring is Creepy," though James' vocals were a little low. The sound got better and the first part of the show was enjoyable. I have to say though, the show didn't really start for me until "New Slang." Not because that's my favorite song (it's not), but because they really didn't show very much other than good music up to that point. I mean, it's great when bands play shows really well, but I wouldn't pay 25 dollars to see what I could hear at home. When New Slang started, the background behind the band turned into something mirroring the sky, a curtain with white lights. Also, the band started to talk more around that time. Marty is absolutely great. He seems like the heart of the band (in terms of the performance anyway) and he never stopped having fun. After.. new slang, I think it was, someone threw flowers on stage, so Marty took some flowers out and put them behind all of the band members ears. He pranced around stage and was just generally awesome, and I can safetly say that if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have enjoyed the show as much. They made us wait a while for the encore, but it was all well worth it.

set list (the end was a bit ripped off, so I had to write in "so says I"):


My final feeling about this show, even though it was great, was that it would have been even better at the Bowery. The Brunettes were funny and quirky - almost an arcade fire unicorns kind of thing that would have been so much better in a smaller venue. Also, the Shins were fantastic, but it would have been even better if that energy were contained in a space like the Bowery. But really, if you have an opportunity to catch either of these guys, do it! It's worth it. (even the $25.)

More pictures ala my webshots. (the one with marty and neal is in the entry below)