Last night I saw the shins

They were bony and easily bruised. Last night I saw The Shins. They were good. Perhaps sadly, they met expectations.

I was wondering whether they would be any different to their recordings. Turns out they’re not. The singer sings well – he has a great voice. The band played well. They’re very much into swapping instruments. Aside from the drummer and singer (who also played mostly rhythm guitar), the other three band members swapped roles as keyboardist, bassist, lead guitarist and other rhythm guitarist during the show.

Their slower songs were nice, although they played New Slang a little too slow for my liking. Their faster songs went down well. They played most of my favourite songs. My fellow attendees noted the Enmore often has poor sound quality. What’s up with that?

For me the highlight was the encore, during which they played Pink Floyd’s Bicycle. Such a surprising choice. Wait, sorry – they played Pink Floyd’s Breathe (slow intro - be patient). If only they’d added the 7 minute interlude of buzzing noises, clocks, mad laughter and alarms, they really could have made an impression. It was good to hear the Shins singing “Run, rabbit run.” Come to think of it, that could easily be a Shins lyric. Actually, the more I think of it, if the pace and melody were changed, the words of Breathe fit astonishingly (you heard me, astonishingly) well with known Shinsian output.

All of this a reminder of the Studio vs Stage Divide. It’s generally disappointing when the live performance echoes the recording. The important exception is when the performer/s are so damn good that you’d pay good money just to see someones do that in person. But if they’re that good, they’re probably going to make some changes anyway.

The other exception seems to be classical music, although my untrained ears may be missing something (incidentally, why do we lavish respect to musicians who note for note play something someone else has written, but ignore translators who have taken one masterpiece and faithfully converted it into an entirely new medium?).

Otherwise, you want your live performances to add something. It may be high quality banter, 45 costume changes, chaos or improvisation. I dunno, maybe if the lead singer’s really hot, it’s just worth it to see them in person. Last night there were plenty of frenzied fans, but I can’t find their reason, unless they were physically attracted to the band members. I just don’t understand them.

I wonder what it would take for me to frenzy… Maybe the older and smarter I get, the more likely I’ll be to frenzy.