How amazing the Shins' third album 'Wincing The Night Away' is. It brings us full of perfect pops as well as emotional rock'n'roll in a beautifully organised way. These notably catchy melodies with a sense of sentimentalism are very significance of wonderful US indie muso the likes of Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Compared to average UK musicians who are attractive enough to focus their eyes on the TV monitor or camera lens to pose and skinny enough to be stylish, these people may be far from being cool and what's worse, they always seem to wear clothes as if they were left unwashed on the floor for a long time. Even so they become tremendously great musicians once they stand on the stage with instruments and that is the magic! Well, you may as well prefer good looking musicians, but they are not playing songs to cover a front page of the fashion magazine.

One of good things about the Shins is its magically fantastic melodies that grab our heart straightaway once we start listening to. They bring some comfortable excitement and remain us with a feeling of warmth in the end. There are people who swing their shoulder, clap their hands and sing- along with the Shins who have sold out tonight's Hammersmith Apollo show. Although I was so surprised by their rather dynamic sounds as a rock band at Forum last March, they were kind of stuck in the middle of nowhere in such smaller space (compared to HA) at that time. Now, the bigger and wider space expands those sounds effectively and nicely so each great song unites the Shins and their audience firmly.Their performance is great to see and professionally down-to-earth. Singer James has got such beautiful voices and harmonies are very lively and heartwarming.

They simply write great songs and play them live from time to time, but this simple fact is somewhat the most difficult thing for musicians to manage to do all the time. They must make a lot of effort behind the scenes like any other bands, but for the Shins, the happiness of their music shines on themselves naturally and we are relieved to know that we still have such a wonderful band like them today. It is getting much colder outside in Winter and all you need to warm yourself up is not the heater but the Shins.