The Shins take risks on their third album

Garden State is merely part of The Shins' story.

By Jordan Sargent

Published Jan. 23, 2007

I guess I'm supposed to start out this review by mentioning Garden State, saving lives and Natalie Portman, but the movie is only part of the story. Let's not forget that before Garden State, The Shins had already recorded Chutes Too Narrow, their magnum opus and arguably the defining indie-pop record of the decade. The best songs, "Kissing the Lipless," "Pink Bullets" and especially "Saint Simon," stand as outstanding examples of pop brilliance achieved through tight, concise playing, exemplary layering of each instrument and even better melodies.

Wincing the Night Away, the Portland, Ore.-based band's third album, is at its best when The Shins naturally expand outward on that type of unflappably tight indie rock.

"Australia," possibly the best song in the band's whole catalog, is The Shins' fullest-sounding song to date. Under heavy distortion, no instrument is particularly discernable from another, but all together they sound like one menacing, complete being. The racing acoustic strums and equally paced backbeat rumble throughout the song's duration, punctuated by splashing cymbal crashes and the occasional banjo. The whole thing would probably be a mess were it not for James Mercer's vocals, which are altered to sound as if ten Mercers are singing from 25 feet above and away from everyone else. It's a striking performance from a band that always sounded like middle-aged introverts, and it's a song that would billow out of your ears if headphones weren't plugging the holes.

Though "Australia" is The Shins reaching their indie-rock apex, much more bally will be hoo-ed regarding the departures that The Shins take from the straight-forward sound of its past. "Sleeping Lessons" opens the record with fluttering keyboards that float and hover around Mercer's again distorted vocals. "Red Rabbits" is centered around a faucet-drip synth line and even sports a — gasp ­— violin. But those are the only true bright spots in this category as the most drastic departures — the almost power chord strums on "Sea Legs" and the ghostly, dreadful "Black Wave" — fall flat on their faces.

The best songs here, the aforementioned "Australia" and "Sleeping Lessons", and most of the back half, like "Turn on Me" and "A Comet Appears," sound like natural, full-bodied progressions of their predecessors. Mercer's processed vocals sound airy and weightless, and The Shins achieve newer sounds not by adding instruments they have never used but by manipulating their past sounds. The result is a cohesive, distorted, meticulously produced album in which The Shins have created a hazy, almost otherworldly atmosphere around themselves.

Lyrically, Mercer is predictably ambiguous at times but breathtaking at others. "Sleeping Lessons," is a call to arms of sorts in which Mercer touts independence and self-direction, telling the song's subject: "You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise/ See, those unrepentant buzzards want your life/ And they've got no right."

Elsewhere, the vague religiosity of "Phantom Limb" is saved only by its melody and cooed "oh", and "Red Rabbits" gets lost in its story of gunnysacks and sprites.

Wincing the Night Away might sound like the work of a band turning its back on its accidental fame by making a sonically and lyrically dark and complex album, but that's purely coincidental. It is instead an album that sounds like the next step for a band that's been there, done that. It's also inextricably tied to a movie that's only still relevant because of the band's continued relevance and only when people separate the two from each other will they realize that The Shins' third album is a beautiful, rough gem.