and if you turn to me like a gull takes to the wind

i saw the shins live tonight. went up north to congress theatre in the freaking cold, but i must say it was quite worth it. overall it was quite an entertaining show, and quite a lot longer than i'd expected.

the bad stuff first: it was pretty much just playing off their albums. it was really amusing when this guy shouted "50 more!" in response to them saying that they were going off after another 2 more, cos they obviously don't have 50 songs in their complete discography. as a band, their music is very engineered. on their albums, the music sounds very layered, and almost overly-produced. but that is obviously not reproducible live, especially since their equipment seems to be a little wonky. also, james mercer needs to become a frontman. he's doing great as a lead vocalist, but he really has to get more stage presence. and work on his banter. and finally, they really have to rehearse their new songs a little more. the first 4 songs that began the set was taken straight off from the new album, but they really weren't well done. "pam berry" into "phantom limb" was decent, but only because they have toured that for quite a while. but "sleeping lessons" and "australia" were quite lacklustre.

the good stuff: girl on the wing was really well done. it's practically impossible to reproduce the album version of the song cos it's just so layered, so they went an entirely different way with it. slowed it down just a little, made it less clean, changed the key for the vocals... basically retooled the song for a live show. a bit more of this would definitely have made it more interesting. the setlist felt very well written. a nice mix of new and old. i was afraid that they were going to focus a lot on the new material, and after the first 4 songs i got kind of worried, but when they busted out "kissing the lipless", the gig really got going. and it was a long set too, for a band with 3 relatively short albums. i counted about 20, which is impressive cos wilco did about 24 and they have more than twice that material. in generally, songs from "chutes too narrow" and "oh, inverted world" were very well rehearsed and generally just popular among the fans. also, they got loud, which was a pleasant change from their generally soft records. i think they show a lot of potential as a live band, cos their songs can just be manipulated in ways to make them more concert friendly. oh, and the opening act vive voce is actually pretty good.

all in all, a pretty good show. wish they had played a couple more songs in the encore, but the set was hefty and i can't complain.