I’ve listened to the Shins, album one and a half times today, and most other days for the past few weeks.

Friends warn that they sound like Travis, the Guardian compared them to "They Might Be Giants and the Ben Folds Five"(!!). So by rights they should be completely hateful.. & yet & yet.. they’re stuck in my CD player like glue.

I think on one level it's cos the full-scale summer has just gloriously emerged out of the traditional farting around months of 'half-summer', and musically speaking the emergence of summer demands one thing from my wretched kind: floppy haired white boys singing jolly and slightly skewed tunes in an enjoyable manner. And listening to the Shins makes a change from listening to the Byrds 'greatest hits' AGAIN.

More than just that though, the Shins manage to balance everything just right; they’re fun and nice sounding without ever being bland, a bit weird without being quirky, emotional without being whiny - you get the idea. Everything fits just perfectly where it should be.

In his notes in this year’s ATP programme, Stephen Malkmus says of the Shins; "These guys have a lot of songs, in the traditional sense", and that nails it, pretty much. The Shins' songs are like the painstaking works of a master craftsman. Not a note is wasted – every single section of every single song manages to be that-bit-you-really-like, without any that-bit-that’s-merely-OK nonsense to get in the way. These songs should be sold in antique shop windows for £75 each.

But obviously a 'perfect' album does not necessarily equal a truly great album – a truly great album needs to temper it’s soul of genius with uncertainty, confusion and mistakes etc., rather than simply a polished sheen. (A bit of a horrific string of clichés there I'm afraid, but you know what I’m getting at.)

And when I'm not actually in the process of listening to the Shins album, I find myself regarding it with a certain coldness and suspicion. It gives off a message that's kind of like; "Why bother waiting around for unpredictable characters like Malkmus and Westerberg to deliver up their occasional batches of fractured greatness, when you can now rely on these well-trained new pretty boys to dish out the 100% pure 'Crooked Rain..'/'Let It Be' style goods you crave every year for the rest of their lives!"

When I’m in the process of listening to "Chutes Too Narrow" though, all this disappears. "Saint Simon" makes me swoon, "Turn a Square" makes me want to do weird effete skanking dances not seen the days of ‘This Charming Man’, "Mine’s Not a High horse" makes me chuckle, "Kissing the Lipless" makes me conjure some good mental images, "Fighting in a Sack" makes me think of the Replacements, and all the other songs I haven’t mentioned make me smile and nod my head and falteringly attempt to whistle.
Which is good going. 10 songs, just over half an hour, and every single one of them makes you feel happy to be alive. Reservations aside, that's what the concept of 'classic album' ultimately boils down to, isn't it?

(I’ll finish by going for a hat trick of Pavement comparisons in one review by pointing out that it also all sounds VERY Terror Twilight, which is surely a good thing.)