The Shins @ Electric Factory, May 16

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The Shins @ Electric Factory, May 16

POSTED: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

'My pits are sweating. I just noticed.'

It's been two and a half years since the Shins released new recorded material, yet the band still packs them in. At a very sold-out Electric Factory on Saturday, James Mercer led the latest incarnation of The Shins (so long, Jesse and Marty; hello Ron and Joe) through a substantial, if at times wanderingly subdued, set of old favorites (that's all they have at this point, yeah?), a few new tracks (from that, ahem, forthcoming album), and some surprising covers.

Kicking off with 'Know Your Onion!,' the drowsy 'Weird Divide' and the ponderously chipper 'Turn a Square,' Mercer and co. set the tone early: This was gonna be a back-catalog show. Maybe Mercer's partial to Oh, Inverted World, or maybe he knows that when you sell out a venue the size of EF with no new material to speak of, you're bringing out die hards and/or the Garden State crowd.

Oh, Inverted World was the album best represented in 22-song setlist. Mercer sang 'Girl on the Wing' as red-lit smoke swirled in the air above the stage, then segued into 'Past and Pending' which he performed bathed in cool blue spotlights. The first half of the set was sleepy. 'Red Rabbits' and 'Saint Simon' and 'Sea Legs' are fine songs; played consecutively they have a mild sedative effect.

After pausing to comment on the sweatiness of his armpits, Mercer and co picked up the pace a bit. After a new song, they jumped into 'Caring Is Creepy,' prompting screams from a young crowd that had been patiently appreciative to this point. The band followed with a cover of Neil Young's 'Helpless' that might have confused the tweens in the crowd, but which showed off Mercer's underrated pipes; he can belt out a slow burner with the best of them.

The ensuing lengthy take on 'Those To Come,' which transformed into an ebbing and flowing drone/jam session with the band bathed first in deep purple lighting then in darkness, prompted something like a minor exodus of perplexed-looking high schoolers. As the band emerged from their trance, engulfed in ghostly white spotlights, they slid into the eerie calm of Wincing The Night Away's 'Sleeping Lessons,' a song that plays very much like a lullabye until it simply explodes two and a half minutes in. It's an effect that's enhanced something like 10-fold live.

The band concluded and said their adieus only to return 5 minutes later for their encore in fresh, non-pit-stained shirts. They teased the crowd with the first few bars of 'New Slang' before launching into a Monk's cover (still trying to dig up the name of that track; it went "do it, do it, do it), a brief interlude from Slaughter's 'Up All Night (Sleep All Day)' that led into 'One by One All Day.'

'Oh, what a shot of whiskey can do,' exclaimed a rejuvenated Mercer before beginning the acoustic guitar and tambourine intro of the song much of the crowd came to hear. Except Mercer withheld "New Slang"'s telltale 'oooh ooooh ooooh's. So the crowd started for him.

When Mercer finally jumped in, there was a palpable sense of relief. Kids mouthed the words or sang along. They swayed. They swooned. They looked at each other knowingly. 'New Slang' is an odd closer. It's a wonderful song, no doubt, but it's such an understated, unassuming tune, it's almost the definition of an anti-climax. As the song finished, the crowd didn't scream for more. They applauded happily and as the lights came up, they turned around calmly to leave, as if they'd just had a wish fulfilled. They'd heard the song that changed their lives.

(Setlist after the jump.)

Previously: CP's 2007 interview with Mercer.

Additional: I bumped into former CP intern/current Magnet intern Maureen Coulter in the photo pit. Read her review here.

Setlist
1 Know Your Onion!
2 Weird Divide
3 Turn a Square
4 Red Rabbits
5 Saint Simon
6 Sea Legs
7 New Song?
8 ???
9 New Song?
10 'Gone for Good'
11 'Girl on the Wing'
12 The Past and Pending
13 Australia
14 New Song
15 Caring is Creepy
16 Helpless (Neil Young cover)
17 Those to Come
18 Sleeping Lessons

ENCORE
19 Monks cover
20 Up All Night, Sleep All Day
21 One by One All Day

22 New Slang

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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