Killing It Softly

[April 13th, 2005] Looking at a packed house at the Crystal Ballroom, the Shins' Marty Crandall made a sort of promise. "Hopefully we'll start recording a new album after we finish this tour," said the buoyant keyboardist, guitarist and babble box.

The response from the 1,500 in attendence was notable for its enthusiasm-people really want his band to crank out more music-and the fact that the band's new songs garnered little more than a whimper.

The Shins have become a formidable indie-pop machine in the past year, after landing songs on the soundtracks for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Garden State, building on earlier notoriety gained when the band leased a song to McDonald's and leadman James Mercer scored a Gap commercial. Instead of radio, the Shins have relied on the pop-culture market to push their music. And it has: The band's sophomore effort, Chutes Too Narrow, has sold more than 600,000 copies. Those might not be coke-on-the-private-jet numbers, but they're definitely an amazing feat for an independent band with two albums.

At last Thursday night's concert, Mercer and his buddies, all of whom have moved to Portland from New Mexico, pulled songs from both releases, pushing the crowd's buttons with favorites from Oh Inverted World ("New Slang," "Know Your Onion!") and Chutes ("Kissing the Lipless," "Pink Bullets"). But if the crowd seemed restless, it was understandable: The Shins have been touring on Chutes for two years, singing these same songs to a swelling fanbase.

The result? Half of the people in this Portland crowd are singing along passionately to every word, still in the grip of Mercer's quizzical lyrical landscapes and punchy pop arrangements. For the other half-the half that is familiar with the show-Shins' songs are nostalgic. "I remember when I got this album," one girl told her friend while the band played "New Slang." "I played it every day for, like, three months."

There's a moment on that first true listen, when the the Shins can change your life, as Natalie Portman's character says in Garden State. And for months, the memory of that moment is solidified with listen after listen after listen, until the song is pulled out of rotation, the listeners' torrid addiction finally gone. It's called killing a song, and Shins' songs, like few other pop songs today, beg to be killed.

So at this Thursday-night concert, a lot of fans seemed bored, having already buried these beautiful melodies and now wait for more. The new material still needs some work, based on the band's four-song block at the Crystal, a collection of tracks lacking the vocal range and curious instrumentation that, hopefully, comes after months of experimentation.

Then, 40 minutes into the show, the band played another newcomer to its repertoire, this one a near-perfect pop song. An uptempo shuffle with a memorable chorus, the song transfixed the crowd, which responded with thunderous applause. "Thanks," Mercer said. "That was a song by the Magnetic Fields." "Strange Powers," to be exact.