indy cd & vinyl

“This band will change your life,” exclaimed Natalie Portman in Garden State. More appropriately, she should have said, “This scene will change this band’s life,” for that is what happened to The Shins. Working in relative obscurity in Albuquerque, New Mexico, The Shins put out two wonderful albums of classic pop that barely registered on the national scene (they also put out one prior album under the moniker “Flake Music”). After Garden State, they became indie-rock darlings and their sales skyrocketed. They subsequently moved to Portland and began to fashion their third album. After three years,

Wincing The Night Away is the result. Rather than attempting some big departure to show how they’ve “grown/matured,” lead Shin James Mercer sticks to what he and his band do best—playing finely crafted, winsome and melancholy pop-rock that sticks in your head.  While there is more emphasis on production and atmosphere than on their previous discs (surely due to a bigger budget to work with), don’t go looking for any artsy or prog-rock moments, psychedelic experimentation or hip-hop inserts.  Instead, you’ll find eleven songs that emphasize the sweet sounds of the two B’s (Beatles, Beach Boys), with just enough contemporary touches (e.g., shimmery vibes on “Sleeping Lessons,” lap steel on “Red Rabbit”) to keep the band firmly within the indie-rock fold.  The most modern parts of The Shin’s music, however, are Mercer’s lyrics. He strings together tangentially related lines that rely more on wordplay and associations than on narrative storylines (e.g., “if the old guard still offend/they’ve got nothing left on which you depend/so enlist every ounce of your bright blood/and off with their heads/jump from the hook you’re not obliged to swallow”). Indeed, the only way you might know that first single “Phantom Limb” is about a lesbian high school couple is by reading about it in interviews with the band. But such obscurantism is not off-putting simply because Mercer sings each line with such conviction and feeling that you feel he believes whatever it is he might be saying.  The genius of The Shins is that their whole approach relies on understatement and subtlety of craft, but their result is completely convincing music that simply feels right. They may not change your life, but they’ll surely make it more enjoyable as you go about living it.