New Years Tunes
Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Happy New Years. Next up MLK and Valentines in Febuugly. Enjoy.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away - Advance

I couldn't get enough of Oh, Inverted World and Chutes too Narrow from the Shins. Then I downloaded a copy of vocalist/guitarist James Mercer performing solo and acoustic on some radio station in Portland. Afterwards, because of his rougher, more traditional delivery of the songs, the aforementioned records seem to pale in comparison. Certainly it isn't that Inverted and Chutes aren't good records; nay, they're great pop albums. It's simply that there was something more honest, less fluffy, more forthright about Mercer's solo reinterpretations.
I was excited upon reading about Wincing the Night Away. Early reviews claimed it to be "heavier," and its first single, Phantom Limb, seemed to bear this out. Now that I have my hands on what appears to be a full advance, of all the things Wincing is heavier is not one of them. If you're the sort who thought that the Shins previous albums suffered from delusions of pop grandeur Wincing will undoubtedly stand as pure edification, as it's far and away the most produced album of their limited catalog.
It will be interesting to see how this album is received. I can't imagine that the school of XTC pop (which has until now embraced the Shins) will appreciate this release given its relative dearth of guitar. My vote is still out on where Wincing stands with the bands other releases. On thing that's particularly unsettling is that some of the songs where the band is obviously "stretching" invariably invoke whispers of The Fixx in my mind. Don't misunderstand; I've been a closet devotee of The Fixx for decades now (listen to Reach the Beach, Shuttered Room or Phantoms and tell me that they weren't an early "indie" band that just happened to be good enough to hit mainstream radio), but I never thought I'd align them with the Shins... or any other band circa 2007, for that matter.
Wincing the Night Away will require revisiting.
Read more about the Shins on Wikipedia.
http://www.theshins.com/

posted by josefek @ 5:55 PM,

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