One of the greatest detriments to being a (self-proclaimed) music critic is that since I’ve started listening to music with an intently critical ear, it’s become impossible to stop. What’s worse is that I can no longer listen to anything new without worrying that I’m not listening to it right. Worse still, I now live in near constant fear that all the music I’ve listened to in the past hasn’t been heard in the right way either. I worry that even my favorite records deserve a more focused or mindful listen in order to reveal their true nature. I worry that if I were to give some such records a ‘proper’ listen, I wouldn’t like them as much. But most of all, I often find myself nervously wondering what albums or artists I have dismissed over the past six or seven years of my musically conscious life without giving them their due share of fair, engaged listens.
The Shins are a charming, wholly inoffensive indie pop band based in Portland, Oregon, and I have spent the better part of the past year utterly terrified of them — Well, not terrified of them, exactly, but rather what they represent: the notion that I could be missing out on great music because I hadn’t listened to it the right way. To my knowledge, the Shins are a band that many people enjoy listening to and have enjoyed listening to for over a decade now. But to me, they are just a band. I have listened to their music and I know about as much as a budding music journalist needs to know about them, but I feel no ties to their music. The Shins are not my favorite band, nor are they ‘my’ band at all, and this troubles me. In an effort to quell my James Mercer-inspired fright spells, I decided to rediscover the Shins, and approach their music from a new perspective.
Although I had listened to essentially their entire body of work, the idea of the music of The Shins still felt alien to me prior to this exercise. It was like a vast and unexplored reservoir of material preserved from an era of purposeful indie quirkiness that I was simply too young or too stubborn to have experienced firsthand. Only now, with sixteen years under my belt and having discovered enough music on my own to be genuinely confident in my tastes, did I feel truly comfortable exploring this group with an open mind and active ears. All I needed was an opportunity to do so, an opportunity which was afforded to me by the release of The Shins’ new album Port Of Morrow, their first since 2007.
When I first heard “Simple Song,” the single released in advance of the new album, I was struck with a warm but confusing sense of familiarity. Those crystalline guitar chords, that never-gets-old “Be My Baby” drum beat, and James Mercer’s distinctive vocals arching to the precipice of his range deeply resonated with me on that initial listen. For the first time, I felt like this band’s shell was cracking open for me, and although this feeling has diminished somewhat with subsequent listens, it was this track that effectively set me off on my quest for rediscovery. In that moment, I wondered whether “Simple Song” could have been used as effectively in a 2012 version of Garden State as “New Slang” was when that film came out in 2004. If I were Zach Braff, and a young Natalie Portman told me to listen to “Simple Song,” would it have changed my life?
Upon revisiting “New Slang” and considering it in the context of the record Oh, Inverted World, I’m struck by how relatively subdued it is. Overall, Oh, Inverted World is probably the least bombastic Shins record, since its most lofty moments are largely tempered by the limitations of its production, but even on that record “New Slang” seems exceptionally quiet and unobtrusive. Singing over coolly strummed acoustic guitar and gentle tambourine, Mercer almost sounds like Belle and Sebastian’s affected frontman Stuart Murdoch for a second or two. Mercer’s lyrics are typically poetic and frustratingly thorny. Everyone remembers the line about “dirt in your fries,” but what does that really mean? His delivery seems to reject that question. On the track, he sings with a kind of disaffected passivity that is almost startling in its lack of engagement. “New Slang” is like the antithesis of “Simple Song.” Whereas the latter is musically rich, upbeat, and lyrically coarse (it’s true to its name), the former is subdued, calm, and tough to decipher. In effect though, they’re largely the same; both stand out to me as rare points in their discography that speak to me on a transcendent level.
With this in mind, I’m not sure if “Simple Song” would have changed my life had I been in Braff’s position in a 2012 version of Garden State, but it certainly would have made a strong initial impact. “New Slang,” on the other hand, is less immediately appealing but probably rewards repeated listens better. It also speaks more to the film’s themes of awakening and small town identity, whereas “Simple Song” just kind of speaks.
When I was first taking an active role in getting into music about four years ago, I joined a music forum called Music Banter. It was there that I first became aware of The Shins, not through “New Slang” or Garden State, or even through their then-new album Wincing The Night Away, but rather by accident. As a young, musically confused individual who was just starting to listen to Sufjan Stevens at the time, I received a spontaneous recommendation to check out The Shins’ 2003 record Chutes Too Narrow. After looking it up, I was wary of listening to it. The band’s simple name, combined with the cartoonish imagery of the album cover and silly song titles like “Kissing The Lipless,” spelled “childish” to me back then, which was something that I expressly wanted to avoid. Ironically, I was very much a child at the time, and if I hadn’t been so stubborn and headstrong, I probably would have enjoyed the record a lot.
Chutes Too Narrow is a very different record from its predecessor, sporting improved production and a generally more confident sound. There aren’t any “New Slang” moments here, and if there were any they would sound even more jarring than that song did in the context of Oh, Inverted World. After a fresh listen, this record actually sounds more like the idealized version of The Shins that I’ve always had in my mind. Chutes Too Narrow is summer barbecue music; it’s catchy, clean, and predominantly easy to listen to. None of those are inherently bad traits, but they do have the potential to be boring traits, and unfortunately this record is kind boring because of that. There’s no pain here, and there are almost no genuinely exciting moments, particularly excepting that moment in “Kissing The Lipless” when Mercer raises his voice to that distinctive wail. The jaunty “Fighting In A Sack” is also lively enough to sustain active interest, but as a whole this record actually works better when listened to passively.
This bittersweet truth speaks to how I’ve felt about The Shins in general and how I still more or less feel about them, having effectively completed this exercise in rediscovery. For every piece as immediately appealing as “Simple Song,” or as rife for deep, exploratory listening as “New Slang,” The Shins have numerous songs that just work better for me when I don’t force myself to pay attention to them.
I am almost positive that the first song I ever heard by The Shins was “Phantom Limb,” the first single from Wincing The Night Away. I believe that this is true because, as far as I know, my father’s favorite radio station (WEHM) has played it at least once every single week since it debuted in 2006. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve passively listened to that song well over a hundred times, and that wonderfully lofty melody is just as deeply ingrained in my psyche as any other. But once I took the time to actually listen to Wincing The Night Away, I was puzzled to find myself growing tired of it. “Phantom Limb” is far and away the best track on the album, and possibly the band’s best song overall, but I’ve found that with active listens, its appeal burns out with frustrating speed. This is frustrating on two counts. First of all, how does one manage to balance active and passive listening so as to maximize the music’s appeal? Secondly, what does this say about the rest of the record if the best track is only enjoyable to listen to for a limited amount of time? Wincing The Night Away is by no means a bad record, but its best moments are tenuously appealing such that my enjoyment of it constantly feels in jeopardy.
The same can largely be said for Port Of Morrow, the Shins’ brand new record. “Simple Song” is, as expected, easily the best track, but most of the other songs are quite good as well, especially the opening song “The Rifle’s Spiral.” Mercer’s backing band sounds better than ever, probably because they’re totally different people, and his songwriting and knack for melody is just as strong as it’s always been. I just fear that the more I listen to it and focus on it, the less I’ll enjoy it with time. I can see myself in a year, having played out “Simple Song” ad infinitum, never wanting to listen to this again. But then again, maybe a year or so after that, I will undergo another process of rediscovery with this band, and learn to understand them in a way that I previously hadn’t. It’s certainly possible that I haven’t completely figured The Shins out yet, as this exercise has hardly been exhaustively thorough. All I can say is that for the time being, I’m content to listen to this band’s music as I previously have, knowing that my understanding of them is resolute and up to date. If I’m still missing something, hopefully it will be revealed to me in time. Until then, my life remains pleasantly unchanged. Sorry Natalie.
__________________________
Port of Morrow is available for pre-order now from The Shins’ official website. It comes out on March 20th, and can be streamed in full for free via iTunes.
