The Shins @ Metro City, Perth(3/8/2007)

Sun 5th Aug, 2007 in Gig Reviews

The Shins love Australia. Before the Natalie Portman thing took them from relative obscurity to indie’s A-list, they set out on a tour of bars down the east coast shortly after releasing second album Chutes Too Narrow. They must have enjoyed themselves, as it wasn’t long before they were back… and by the time they made their Perth debut at the Beck’s Verandah early in 2005, Garden State had got everyone talking about an indie-pop band from Albuquerque. Needless to say, the gig sold out very, very quickly. And less than a year on, they were back again, playing a bunch of summer festival to even bigger crowds.

You’d have to be an idiot not to notice the trend here: The Shins love Australia and Australia loves The Shins. What’s so remarkable about the relationship is that it all happened on the back of Chutes Too Narrow. So over the past couple of visits, the only real differences were the slightly different running order and a slightly slicker and more professional delivery of the same songs. But now things have changed. They’ve got a new album, Wincing the Night Away, to promote and new member Eric Johnson to introduce to Australian crowds.

The tone is set from the opening stages. It’s the Wincing the Night Away tour, so naturally, the opening track is side one, track one from the new record. Never a band to sacrifice musicianship for the spectacular, The Shins’ approach is softly softly, easing into it with Sleeping Lessons. And followed by the instant crowd favourite of Australia, frontman James Mercer and comrades found the ideal bridge between the band’s new material and the close relationship they have with their Australian fans.

But as if to acknowledge that relationship, The Shins dodge that nasty flog-the-new-album trap that most bands fall into when they reach this stage of their career and begin shuffling tracks from their previous two albums in with the new material. Perhaps to weed out the Garden State fans, New Slang comes fairly early, and it comes as some surprise that the reaction their biggest hit receives sits on a par with just about every other song the band serves up. Playing by far their largest WA show to date, it was always going to be about how the subtleties and intricacies of their quieter tracks translated to the larger crowd and, thanks to a wonderfully receptive crowd, Mercer’s clever yet often understated lyrics manage to fill the venue. And with the added effect of Johnson on guitar, keys and side guitar, The Shins manage to hang onto all the things that made them The Shins before they could even dream of playing somewhere as big as Metro City.

All that aside, perhaps the most surprising aspect of tonight’s show is the band’s ability to deliver a rock show. Despite Mercer’s slightly clumsy presence as the unwitting frontman, his role is balanced out by Dave Hernandez (bass, guitars), who seems the most at home on the large stage, playing with the kind of energy and enthusiasm you’d expect from a band whose chord repertoire stops at three. And after the momentary breather that comes with Gone for Good, it’s all about the rock, closing with the adrenaline rush of So Says I.

And with the crowd wanting more, the encore was inevitable; despite only having three albums under their belt, there are still plenty of crowd favourites left unplayed. So it comes as some surprise then, that instead of one of their bigger hits, the five members return to the stage and fill the room with a cover of Pink Floyd’s Breathe, which draws as big a cheer as anything they’ve played tonight. Inevitably, Caring is Creepy and Past and Pending come, followed by a wonderfully lively rendition of Know Your Onion! to close. Yes, The Shins may be more polished than The Shins we’ve seen before but any band that can hang onto their quirks and subtleties while successfully translating their sound for a larger audience deserves all the credit in the world.