The Shins at The Pageant

The Shins have just announced a spring tour and will be playing at The Pageant on Sunday, February 11. The band's third full length album, Wincing the Night Away, will be released on January 23, 2007, and I can tell you it's a doozy. Not quite as much straight-ahead pop as Chutes Too Narrow, but songs like "Australia", "Turn On Me" and first single "Phantom Limb" are as good and poppy as anything they've done. If you have followed and tracked down various band and solo bootlegs over the past three years, you will have no doubt heard some of these songs in other forms, in particular "Girl Sailor", which was labeled "Won One Too Many Fights" on various James Mercer solo-performance bootlegs.

I saw The Shins play in St. Louis in what I think was their last performance here, at the Galaxy Club on Washington Avenue in support of Oh, Inverted World. There was a respectable crowd, but, by no means, was there much buzz about this little band from the Northwest. I imagine this show at The Pageant, however, will easily sell out.

MP3:
The Shins - Phantom Limb