People dig the Shins for largely the same reason that Garden State, the movie that helped break them, was a hit: both evoke the kind of real emotion that lives somewhere between the vulnerability and swagger that permeates modern popular music.

That gift was on full display last night in the Shins' 80-minute set at the Warfield here, the band's second show of a three-night run at the storied venue, a sign of just how far this band has come since Garden State came out in 2003.

Frontman James Mercer is a truly gifted songwriter, able to craft wonderfully idiosyncratic pop songs that ride the fence between quirkiness and catchiness. And the rest of the band, aided by new addition Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats, is perfectly capable at pulling them off live.

But it wasn't the most exciting live show. The band doesn't have much of an onstage personality, goaded out of the standard greetings and salutations only by a few drunks in the balcony who used song breaks to scratch their yelling itch.

The Shins are more of an album band in the sense that the songs don't really take on new life in a live setting. That said, they have a sizable catalog of fantastic songs, and the packed house last night was clearly thrilled to see and hear them performed.

The night kicked off with the sweeping atmospherics of "Sleeping Lesson," the first track off the band's new album, Wincing the Night Away. Backed by a spare smattering of high light bulbs and a banner of the new album's artwork, Mercer belted out his oddball lyrics: "Collect your novel petals for the stem / and glow glow melt and flow / eviscerate your fragile frame / and spill it out on the ragged floor / a thousand different versions of yourself."

Mercer later introduced the new album's next single, "Australia," which itself is about as good a pop song as you'll hear this year, by noting they'd just filmed a video for the track. The video, available on the band's Web site, features the band mimicking The A Team, but instead of taking on some bad guys, they steal hundreds of balloons from a used car lot.

Unlike the energy of most rock shows, which dip a bit during ballads and pick up during more explosive numbers, the Shins' ballads were the most compelling songs of the night. The toppers were "New Slang" and "Caring is Creepy," the two songs that were nearly characters of their own in Garden State.

For an encore, the band performed a cover of Pink Floyd's "Breathe," and was able to perfectly capture the depth and tone of the song. "So Says I," perhaps the band's most uptempo song, closed out the night, but the typical raucous coda didn't quite fit this show. The night's quieter, melancholic-yet-sweet ballads defined this night.