Welcome, Freshmen
The Shins
w/ The Fiery Furnaces
9.9.2004
@ Coles Sports Center, NYU
by Rachel Waxman

Each year, New York University treats its students to a “mystery concert,” meant to mystify, entertain and unite the student body. Never mysteries for long, the headliners typically own the title “Band Most Likely to be on College Students’ I-Pods.” (Past shows include Fountains of Wayne, Jurassic 5 and Phantom Planet). This year, once the word got out, the campus was ready to gently rock out to their indie-heroes, The Shins, with art-rockers of the moment The Fiery Furnaces opening.

Indeed, the only mystery that night was the peculiar location. Past concerts have been held at Irving Plaza, and last year’s show was held in NYU’s newly opened Kimmel Center for University Life. With a huge banner declaring “Coles Rocks” and janitors making rounds behind the stage, Coles Sports Center provided an eccentric but familiar backdrop to what promised to be an interesting night for NYU’s own.

Dapper-hatted Furnaces’ drummer Andy Knowles leapt on stage and started fiddling with the equipment. His bandmates were soon to follow, and the chatter came to a standstill.

Eleanor Friedberger proved to be quite the gutsy frontwoman, backed by bassist Toshi Yano, Knowles and her brother Matt. She made us shut up and listen to the fast, husky delivery of her simple yet energetic songs, which sometimes sound like nursery rhymes, but her style led me to believe that’s not always a bad thing.

Fifteen minutes later, the scruffy-looking Shins appeared amidst the bright lights. The bearded one yelled greetings to the frenzied crowd.

Declarations over, they dove into the opener, “Caring is Creepy,” which brought the expectant crowd to a frenzy. Reserving some time for songs between all the wise-cracks, The Shins ambled pleasantly through their set, treating the audience to several new songs in addition to tracks from their two critically acclaimed albums. While they belted out a number of upbeat tracks like “Know Your Onion” and “Kissing the Lipless,” they also filled the melancholy folk void with a mini-acoustic set by singer-songwriter James Mercer. Particularly haunting was his beautifully strummed rendition of “Pink Bullets,” performed so intimately I temporarily forgot the heat and sweat of the thousand freshmen surrounding me.