The Shins: The weight of expectation
Wednesday 07 February @ 15:07:27 |
  by STEVE McPHERSON
For better or worse, The Shins have been freighted with changing lives ever since a winsome girl promised a wayward boy they'd do exactly that in a certain out-of-leftfield indie film hit a couple years back. It seems unfair, though, doesn't it? Music's ability to impact us is in direct relation to where our heads are at when we hear it, and it seems like hundreds of thousands of people may have mistaken a plot device for an epiphany. Natalie Portman laid an awful lot of pressure on the soft shoulders of The Shins' "New Slang," but while the makers of "Studio 60" seem bent on convincing us through sheer force that the show within a show is actually funny, "New Slang" could conceivably change your life, provided its broken and then lovingly reset melody got at you at the right time. The Shins agreed to have the song in the movie because they really believed in the project and that guy from "Scrubs," right?
"Honestly? I didn't think that movie 'Garden State' was going to go anywhere," says guitarist Dave Hernandez, who's stepped in at the last minute to take over an interview that was supposed to be with singer James Mercer. ("James has pretty much been doing 20 of these a day," he explains, "and he's starting to get a little freaked out.") "When we were first shopped it, they were like, 'Dude from "Scrubs" is making his first movie.' And I was like, 'Cool: can we get a copy?' Sort of like, I hope we get a DVD. I had no idea that Natalie Portman was going to be in it and that it was going to go anywhere. It got big and [then] we were touring on the first record all of a sudden, instead of working on our third album. It got us a little more exposure and a little more weirder fans," he laughs, "but what are you gonna do?"
Well, someday, you need to make your third album. Enter Wincing the Night Away, the first album The Shins have made under the withering glare of the popular spotlight, given that their last, Chutes Too Narrow, came out before the breakout success of "Garden State." Of course, it's still the kind of pop stardom that means even front man James Mercer can walk down the street unnoticed, much less Dave Hernandez. Still and all, they did make it on "Saturday Night Live." "We've done everything from 'Austin City Limits' to 'Letterman' before and stuff," says Hernandez, "and this was definitely the most exciting thing we've ever done on TV. This is the only one that's actually live, and I know that sounds obvious because it's in the fucking name, but everything else is at least an hour delayed, so there's at least the illusion of, well, if you mess up they can fix it. For this, you soundcheck and you have a dress rehearsal, and then you're really live and there's something about that. You know, like Ashlee Simpson messed up, Elvis Costello stopped and played 'Radio, Radio' because it was live. Luckily we each had our lip-synching perfect."
For their second tune on SNL, they even played "New Slang," a song which is, according to Hernandez, now older than dirt. "I remember writing that bass line in the basement of a nursery in Albuquerque," where The Shins started before moving to Portland, Ore., several years ago. "You know we have a new member in The Shins?" Hernandez asks. "Eric Johnson? We were talking about this with him, because sometimes we get bored of playing it live, and he's like, 'Come on: that's your "Stairway to Heaven."' I guess he's right about that."
 And honestly, I set to writing this article with the earnest purpose of not talking too much about "New Slang" and Zach Braff, but when you're a fairly straight-ahead indie pop band with a penchant for lilting hooks and '60s psychedelia a la The Zombies by way of '80s Brit-pop like The Smiths, the song that suddenly made you a semi-household name is the elephant in the room. And while Wincing the Night Away isn't strong enough to eclipse their previous efforts, it's doubtful that anything could, given the nature of their sound. It's a strange contradiction that this, their most self-assured and solid-sounding recording to date, was doomed from the start to not stand toe-to-toe with a lo-fi, barely-there ballad. How do you grow and care for a sound whose principal appeal is its very fragility, knowing that it's not going to get the chance to age and mellow on mix tapes this time around, but will rather be thrust in front of a national audience immediately?
Wincing kicks off with "Sleeping Lessons," and it feels like a deliberate attempt to reclaim some of the slightly off-kilter charm that blanketed their debut LP, Oh, Inverted World. It's a sandy-eyed wake-up of a track that takes its sweet time to come around to bursting in at the two-and-a-half minute mark, but once it does, it drives you straight into album highlight "Australia." Mercer's voice, a straining but sweet warble, is still the focus, but the accompaniment is far beefier than it's ever been, especially the drums. There are more textures, like the fuzzed-out bass of "Phantom Limb," which also boasts a gorgeous chorus, and the dance-leaning and, dare I say, funky "Sea Legs," which marries a Morrissey-worthy melody line to a chopped-up acoustic guitar lick and a swathe of flutes and strings. For sure, The Shins sound more like a band here than they ever have before, but an outward similarity to previous efforts masks what may be a tectonic shift in their approach to making music. How any given listener will respond to this record will probably depend largely on how they came to The Shins in the first place: Longtime fans may be hesitant to embrace it, while newer fans who feel less of a sense of ownership might be more inclined to accept it. I can't help feeling that for all its strengths, Wincing the Night Away might be the album before their next great album, their emphasis shifting away from quirky individual songs and towards a more sweeping idea of what an album is. For instance, don't bet on any tracks showing up on your television this time around.
 "I think something about our sound is really palatable to a lot of movie figures and TV shows, I guess," Hernandez reflects. "We're not like, 'Let's get a Gap commercial!'--that just kind of happened. We're all from working-class family backgrounds. Traditionally, it's not a good thing to glorify being poor; we don't really think it's cool to pretend to be poor. I mean, fuck, I want to have a roof over my kids' heads. So our knee-jerk reaction is just, um, OK. It's not for Camel cigarettes, or war, or Bush, so what the hell? We're not letting the U.S. Army use it for a commercial."
Oh well. I guess some things are better left to Godsmack. ||
The Shins perform Thu., Feb. 8 at First Avenue with Viva Voce. 6 p.m. $25. 18+. 701 First Ave. N, Mpls. 612-338-8388. For more info on The Shins, visit their official website at theshins.com.
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