The Shins
Friday and Saturday, 4/29-4/30, Orange Peel

Listening to the Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow is one of those exercises that taxes my musical vocabulary. Not that what they’re doing is unheard of, not by a long shot. No, it’s just unheard of by me. Loyal readers know that I know next-to-nothing about indie rock — the Shins qualify — so when I read that other critics have compared the Shins to Guided by Voices, Badly Drawn Boy, and the New Pornographers, my mind goes blank. (When they invoke the Beach Boys and the Byrds, I have better luck.) Call me indie-rock ignorant: I can recount the life of zydeco pioneer Amede Ardoin, debate the relative merits of the first and second Sonny Boy Williamsons, and even split musicological hairs when comparing the polkas of Texas to the polkas of the Midwest ... but I’ve never listened to an entire Modest Mouse album. So it goes.

Most days of my life, this poses no problem. I’ve found it quite possible to live a happy and useful life even if I can’t hum anything by anyone who has ever appeared on the cover of Spin. And yet I hear the names: the Strokes, the Hives, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Shins. So when I saw that the Shins were playing a two-night stand at the Orange Peel, I figured I owed them a listen. It is better to light a match than to ramble self-referentially about the darkness.

For the record, the Shins are a SubPop-signed Portland-by-way-of-Albuquerque quartet that has made its name on a brand of wistful, summery indie rock that sounds both old and new. If their 2001 release Oh, Inverted World made them darlings of the indie rock community, 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow consummated the deal.

The album I finagled was Chutes Too Narrow, and I can hereby report that I was pleased with the results. There’s something brash and cockeyed about this disc, a mix of boyish enthusiasm and punkish swagger that counts as attitude without overdoing it. James Mercer’s reedy vocal lines are adventurous, the band’s dynamics intriguing, the overall vibe mostly happy. There is an undeniable energy to the album, even on the slower numbers; it feels young and exuberant, and not just when the Shins are indulging a la-la-la backing vocal or a cheeky harmonica lick. The songs are finely textured — not in a sprawling ambitious way (recent Wilco), but in a more contained and organic way, where offhand blips and gurgles fit in nicely without taking center stage.

My favorite lyric comes in “Pink Bullets,” a soft song about a fading relationship:

Since then it’s been a book you read in reverse

So you understand less as the pages turn

Or a movie so crass and awkwardly cast

Even I could be a star.

Listening to that song and several others on this short and amiable album, I almost wanted to drop the indie rock ID and label the Shins electric folk. To be sure, Chutes Too Narrow reflects the sonic imprint that marks indie rock in the new millennium — the lyrical impressionism, the studied use of dynamics, the stray organ riff or cello line — but underneath all that is a simple desire to strum guitars and tell stories. Maybe I can relate to this stuff after all.

Curses! I go through all this trouble to deconstruct the Shins for you only to find out that both shows are sold out! If you have a ticket, you paid 20 bucks for it. If you don’t, you can always try scalping in the parking lot of Mike Byer Auto. Good luck. Both shows start at 9 p.m. The Brunettes open. Call 828.225.5851 for more info.

Also Playing in Asheville

• Mitch Easter, Grey Eagle, 4/29

• Buncombe Turnpike, Jack of the Wood, 4/29

• Black Crowes, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, 4/30

• Cigar Store Indians, Westville Pub, 4/30

• Jazz Mandolin Project, Orange Peel, 5/1

• Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Orange Peel, 5/3

• Paul Westerberg, Orange Peel, 5/4

Three Good Songs That Popped Into My Head Last Week While I Was Lying Prone Trying To Pretend I Wasn’t Having Dental Work Done, In The Order of Their Occurrence

1. “Ain’t Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo’),” Taj Mahal (the extended four-horn version from The Real Thing)

2. “In My Room,” Beach Boys

3. “Rosetta,” Earl “Fatha” Hines

They Said It

“Rock n’ Roll is phony and false, and sung, written and played for the most part by cretinous goons.”

— Frank Sinatra (1957)