Review and Photos from Tinted Windows at the Troubadour

Tinted Windows’ show at the Troubadour Tuesday night turned out to be just as great as one could have expected. When I heard a few months back about the new supergroup, I thought it was a joke, some pop fan’s fantasy. I got excited when I found out it was a real band, as I am a HUGE sucker for a catchy pop song.

The power pop Dream Team’s songs are insanely catchy, memorable tunes that you find yourself singing along with upon first listen. Let’s face facts: Taylor Hanson (of, erm, Hanson), James Iha (formerly of Smashing Pumpkins), Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne), Bun E. Carlos (of Cheap Trick) and Random Touring Guitarist, are just about THE most random group of musicians to ever take the stage together.

The band’s debut album was just released a couple weeks ago, and the songs are as infectious as one would expect from such pros. Tuesday’s sold-out show was packed to the rafters with hipsters, but thankfully that didn’t soil the evening’s festivities. The band played through the whole new album, peppering in a couple b-sides and ending with a cover of the Buzzcocks’ “I Don’t Know What to Do with My Life”, which was a change from the rest of the set, to say the least. Each of the songs from the album translated perfectly to the tiny Troubadour stage, and each musician sounded completely on top of his game.

Taylor Hanson is a great showman, and he had a lot more freedom onstage here than he does with his ‘other’ band. Unlike with Hanson concerts, he didn’t sit in front of a piano for most of the set, so he had to act like a rock and roll front man. He carried it out well. James “F!@*#n” Iha (as Taylor referred to him, providing the “Did he REALLY just say that?? moment of the evening) played the shimmery lead guitar parts for the songs, and did so in typical James Iha fashion. He didn’t say much, other than to introduce the song “Kind of a Girl” as being “awesome”, but he rocked it anyway.

After all, Iha could have mailed in the performance and it would still have been impressive. He WAS in Smashing Pumpkins (back when they REALLY existed and were pretty good) and A Perfect Circle, so it’s pretty great to see him doing something again. While Tinted Windows is just about on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from his other bands, Iha did seem to be enjoying himself on stage. Adam Schlesinger was the glue that held the band together, providing the bass that drove the songs and even helping the extra touring guitarist find his rhythm for one song when he forgot the part. Let’s not forget that Bun E. Carlos is the band’s drummer, of the legendary power pop band Cheap Trick. The man absolutely killed it on drums, accentuating the rest of the band extremely well.

Tinted Windows works because its songs are so fun. The people in this group all love music, and as a result they combined forces to create more fun pop music. It’s infectious. The songs are happy and breezy, and most of the people in the crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. I mean, how can’t you, when you have such pop icons on stage at the same time? It’s still a bit hard to believe that this band really exists, but they do. It’s not just some blogger’s dream.

In all likelihood, this band is just intended as a brief time-killer before they get back to business with their ‘real’ bands, but they work so well together, it’d be a shame to not continue this further. If this ends up being Tinted Windows’ only LA performance before they go back to their day jobs, anyone who missed out on this show should be ashamed that they missed out.

While Billy Corgan is out shamelessly embarrassing himself in wrestling commercials, James Iha continues making music, and while it would have been fun to see him start playing the intro riff to “Zero” that did not happen. This was not a surprise, nor was I expecting any covers of any of the related bands. The band instead did exactly what I figured it would: play its excellent power pop songs with maximum efficiency, and leave the crowd sublimely satisfied by the time the set was over.

Here’s a video of the song ‘Kind of a Girl’ from the show:

Tinted Windows – Kind of a Girl @ Troubadour