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| Huh. It's a whole damn event in Wales. |
For this week’s playlist, I decided to finally learn about and listen to the rest of The Shins’ catalog. When someone first passed the two albums I know (and too well) - Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away - I lost it a little and played both deep, deep into the ground, scattered some favorites across some CDs I made (thus burying those songs deeper into the ground). It was a good time, basically, until I ruined it…
…which means I’ve got something in common with The Shins’ front-man, James Mercer. I kid, I kid. At any rate, because I didn’t know…well, anything about the band - not even that Zach Braff helped make ‘em famous when he bought “New Slang” for his directorial debut, Garden State - everything I read this week was new to me. For people who kept current on music news just over a decade ago, it’ll be old news. I chose a path and walked it, etc.
Also, just to mention, future features in this project will bounce between bands I’ve listened to from, oh, call it somewhere around the middle of high school to circa 2015 - i.e., the point I stopped really collecting music and became one of the simps who streams everything - and the random new stuff that I’ve discovered since. Enough about me…let’s talk about The Shins!
Who They’re For
Fans of dense, metaphor-laden lyrics backed with an indie-rock sound that (generally) leans acoustic, but still has a reasonable poppiness and accessibility.
…which means I’ve got something in common with The Shins’ front-man, James Mercer. I kid, I kid. At any rate, because I didn’t know…well, anything about the band - not even that Zach Braff helped make ‘em famous when he bought “New Slang” for his directorial debut, Garden State - everything I read this week was new to me. For people who kept current on music news just over a decade ago, it’ll be old news. I chose a path and walked it, etc.
Also, just to mention, future features in this project will bounce between bands I’ve listened to from, oh, call it somewhere around the middle of high school to circa 2015 - i.e., the point I stopped really collecting music and became one of the simps who streams everything - and the random new stuff that I’ve discovered since. Enough about me…let’s talk about The Shins!
Who They’re For
Fans of dense, metaphor-laden lyrics backed with an indie-rock sound that (generally) leans acoustic, but still has a reasonable poppiness and accessibility.
The Basics
The Shins actually started in Albuquerque, New Mexico as an off-shoot of another Mercer-fronted project - first Flake, then Flake Music. Wikipedia’s timeline on all this isn’t perfect, but it looks like most members of the collaborative Flake Music transferred over to the Mercer-dominated The Shins (and Flake Music permanently disbanded in 1999). While the membership shifted around a bit, the original members of The Shins included Mercer (guitar, vocals, songwriting), James Langford (bass), Martin Crandall (keys), and Jesse Sandoval (drums). The band was already tight and touring with a couple established acts - e.g., Cibo Matto and Modest Mouse - but they caught their first real break when Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman saw them open for Modest Mouse in San Francisco and offered to release a one-off single - which happened to be “New Slang.” That one single blew up big enough to give the band’s debut album, Oh, Inverted World (2001), a head of steam before it even dropped. And, when it did, it sold about 90,000 more units than Sub Pop expected (100,000) and the band took off. Mercer, who was never shy about licensing his music (what the hell? Get paid, son), boosted the band even more by dishing to McDonald’s for an ad that aired during the Tokyo Olympics in 2001. Mercer relocated to Portland, OR on the royalties, built a basement study for future recording, and started working on 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow…and replacing Langford with David Hernandez from a band called Scared of Chaka. Chutes Too Narrow actually charted (No. 86 on Billboard!), but then the whole Garden State thing happened and The Shins’ first two albums sold even more. The whole she-bang had enough momentum to carry over into Wincing the Night Away (2007), which reached (holy shit!) No. 2 on Billboard.
The Shins actually started in Albuquerque, New Mexico as an off-shoot of another Mercer-fronted project - first Flake, then Flake Music. Wikipedia’s timeline on all this isn’t perfect, but it looks like most members of the collaborative Flake Music transferred over to the Mercer-dominated The Shins (and Flake Music permanently disbanded in 1999). While the membership shifted around a bit, the original members of The Shins included Mercer (guitar, vocals, songwriting), James Langford (bass), Martin Crandall (keys), and Jesse Sandoval (drums). The band was already tight and touring with a couple established acts - e.g., Cibo Matto and Modest Mouse - but they caught their first real break when Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman saw them open for Modest Mouse in San Francisco and offered to release a one-off single - which happened to be “New Slang.” That one single blew up big enough to give the band’s debut album, Oh, Inverted World (2001), a head of steam before it even dropped. And, when it did, it sold about 90,000 more units than Sub Pop expected (100,000) and the band took off. Mercer, who was never shy about licensing his music (what the hell? Get paid, son), boosted the band even more by dishing to McDonald’s for an ad that aired during the Tokyo Olympics in 2001. Mercer relocated to Portland, OR on the royalties, built a basement study for future recording, and started working on 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow…and replacing Langford with David Hernandez from a band called Scared of Chaka. Chutes Too Narrow actually charted (No. 86 on Billboard!), but then the whole Garden State thing happened and The Shins’ first two albums sold even more. The whole she-bang had enough momentum to carry over into Wincing the Night Away (2007), which reached (holy shit!) No. 2 on Billboard.
