The Shins

Unfortunately I have nothing to say about the support act due to the fact that Nottingham Rock City is obviously built in the wrong place because I couldn’t find it.

As for The Shins: Disappointingly average. The first half of the show mainly consisted of songs from the album ‘O inverted world’ which I am not very familiar with. This gap in my Shins education may go part-way in explaining why I found this half so dull. The only thing that kept me interested was the guitarist / bassist / keyboard / comedian’s amusing interludes in which he played samples of what he tastefully called ‘my solo shit’. This consisted of amusing pan-pipe effects on his keyboard and him doing tongue-in-cheek fantasy narration. Because of this the communication with the audience was very well maintained and a very friendly atmosphere was created. The actual layout of the band deserves a special mention here.


The lead singer and guitarist completely shattered the stereotype of lead singers as cocky, pretentious and loud mouthed, often taking as much attention as possibly away from their band-mates. James Mercer, however, was quite meek and completely overshadowed by the keyboardist/comedian in all of those respects that added a refreshing perspective for the audience, opening their minds to the fact that the other member’s of the band exist too. A visual representation of this could be found in the fact that James Mercer lay at the very side of the stage.

They somewhat redeemed themselves in the second half when they played more off their album ‘Chutes To Narrow’. These songs generally got a warmer welcome from the audience who especially warmed to the famous ‘New Slang’ from the film ‘Garden State’ and ‘Saint Simon’ from ‘Chutes to Narrow’. This is when the gig became a lot more enjoyable, not only because they were playing songs that I enjoyed more, but also because the crowd seemed much more exited and full of appreciation. This made the band friendlier and, again, hilarious interludes involving the keyboardist ensued.



On reflection the show as a whole was technically good purely because it was well played and a friendly atmosphere was established. There was something fundamentally missing, though, because it still managed to be quite dull at times. For example any new music didn’t seem to hold any interest. It was only when they played the well-known songs that the energy that was missing began to show it’s much missed head.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.