The Shins at L.A.'s Troubador

I’m sitting upstairs in the VIP Loft Lounge of L.A.’s Troubadour and it’s nice. I have a view of the traffic on Santa Monica Blvd., and a new-looking BMW just pulled up with a Modest Mouse sticker on its window. Ah, to be rich and incredibly stupid.

Aside from the prettier and infinitely less friendly bartender, the main advantage to the VIP lounge is the single-occupancy bathroom. Downstairs, the bathroom is smaller than up here but has three urinals crammed into it, so there’s lots of ass-brushing as folks make their way in and out. And, I assume due to the small space, you have to leave your beer on a table outside where a man is paid to sit and watch the bottles. It’s rare that I’m given access to the VIP lounge, probably because publicists don’t believe that my story about their band will ever run. But Sub Pop believes in me, dammit. And that’s why tonight I can pee with a beer in my hand, just like at home.

Of course, the greatest perk of getting a VIP pass is being seen gaining access to the VIP lounge. Which is why over the course of the evening I will walk up and down those steps 23 times, only 17 to relieve my bladder. My first trip downstairs is when the Busy Signals take the stage. The lead singer is a big heavy guy who isn’t as scary as John Popper but is wearing one of those crocheted caps so I decide they’re hippies and run for the back of the room.

The Busy Signals are Howard Hamilton and his laptop full of hiphop beats, with two folks from a band called Triangle helping out tonight on bass and guitar. The girl on bass is an earthy-looking blonde, probably a hippie, but from the back of the room she looks like Sarah Polley so I let it slide.

The first song is actually quite good. A sweet, happy groove: "No one’s fallin’ for the new you." I enjoy it so much I almost want to join the few people in the room who are doing that big-arm hippie dance, but I white-knuckle the bar instead. It’s an odd performance. Hamilton is basically an MC singing over his beats with the slightest of accompaniment from his live band. The songs start getting a little more reggae, which means a little more sucky. By the end of the set the bass player only looks like Sarah Polley under certain lights. The red ones. Under others the resemblance extends as far as them both being earthy, blonde and very pretty. But when she drops her bass to dance the big-arm hippie dance during one of the songs, I decide I could fall in love with her. Even though most of her sexual history has probably taken place in a lake.

Back upstairs, I spy one of those studded belts around the sullen yet attractive bartender’s waist. It brings me back to my middle-school days when I used to get the shit kicked out of me for wearing a studded wristband to try to look like Quiet Riot. James Mercer, the lead singer and songwriter for the Shins, is standing by the stairs talking to a group of folks, and he looks a bit Cro-Magnon. A big forehead above big fat eyebrows above big white eyeballs. He looks like he would have been great as an extra on M*A*S*H. One of the young guys sitting at the far end of Hawkeye’s table in the mess tent who really doesn’t do anything.

Fruit Bats are up next and I make the mistake of watching their set in the Loud, Fat and Drunk Corner. The chick at the bar won’t stop screaming, "Get off the stage!" and the asshole three inches from my ear thinks it keeps getting funnier every time she does it, based on the increasing decibels of his cackling. This is a fucking Shins show. Dreamy indie pop does not normally inspire rage.

Chicago’s Fruit Bats prove to be quite dreamy. The songs meander like it might be fun to get a little lost, then everything speeds up to something very pretty. Frontman Eric Johnson’s lyrics sound like they were written in a field, or at least while high in the tub. "City’s got me feelin’ like a motherfucker" is sung like it’s a lyric about a pretty cloud on the last song. But the chick behind me is screaming, "Get off the fucking stage!" like she’d like the dreamy indie-pop band to finish their set so the next dreamy indie-pop band might be allowed to perform.

The place is sold out with Shins fans, and as they cross my path I find more and more of them look like the Shins themselves. Specifically, James Mercer. Can a band and its fans start to look alike, like a dog and its master? I’m not talking about wearing one earring because James Mercer does (he doesn’t). I’m talking bone structure and hair patterns. They all look like cavemen.

Right out of the gate the Shins burst into "Girl on the Wing" from Oh, Inverted World, their Sub Pop LP. With Mercer’s lofty pitch and that shimmering and jingling, the Shins are "a sound." Reading Mercer’s lyrics along with the songs is the only way you’d know how vivid they are and what stories they tell. The purpose they serve the song is just to pick at Mercer’s voice and fill out the arrangement with his words as just another instrument.

He barely opens his mouth for "Pressed in a Book" and all this Yellow Submarine animation flies out through the mic. And then there’s "New Slang (When You Notice the Stripes)," which I barely even notice being played live because I still have the album track playing in my head. "Gold teeth, and a curse for this town/Were all in my mouth," Mercer begins. So gentle, carried along by a shy tambourine, "New Slang" is one of those perfect singles that just anchors the whole album. It deserves the kind of praise the La’s continue to receive (though I never got why) for "There She Goes" whenever a rock writer compiles a "Best of" list.

The Shins have an odd bio. First, they’re from Albuquerque, which might as well be Mars based on how it’s sent the press going batshit with amazement. Second, they’ve been around for nine years already, mostly as more of a rocking act under the name Flake. Mercer had to have been hit in the head to veer from writing rock songs to writing some of the prettiest pop I’ve heard in quite a while. The tone makes me think of Belle and Sebastian sped up with more than their usual hand-clapping.

I make one more trip to the VIP lounge after the show to pee. There I discover the downside to the single-occupancy bathroom. A pretty girl is in line behind me and we both wait for the pretty girl inside the bathroom to finish up. When I get in there, I find the seat dripping wet with pee. I hesitate to blame the girl before me, but the girl waiting outside won’t hesitate to blame me. Because I care too much about the opinions of strangers I might never speak to or see again in my life, I find myself sopping up someone else’s urine with toilet paper. When I do my thing and open up, I find the girl behind me violently making out with a boy.