LAURA JOHNSON
A&E Assistant
The only way to understand the latest effort from the four-piece band, The Shins, is to listen to the record, “Wincing the Night Away,” over and over again. Otherwise, the only thing listeners hear is noise.
The tunes of The Shins were thrust into the limelight when Natalie Portman looked at Zach Braff in the film “Garden State” and said, The Shins will “change your life,” before slamming her oversized earphones on his head. The soundtrack alone sold millions of copies worldwide, and The Shins became a favorite of circulation-suppressing pants-wearing emo kids everywhere.
Now The Shins are back, this time with a bit of a different sound than what their fans might be accustomed. To put it straight, this record is wacky. And with the news release photo being a shot of the boys geared up with life vests, paddles and pot bellies (making us wish the shot was of the boys’ shins), this less-than-appealing bit of photography only begins to convey what the band’s sound will be like.
Gone is the more acoustic, whimsical, boisterous sound “Garden State” viewers came to know and love. Yes, this latest CD is all right. For better or worse, the band boasts a unique sound.
Implementing electro-mariachi, synthesizer barbs, and their classic odd mix of whistling and humming, The Shins compile a record chalk full of originality. Reaching into the past for some influences from the hippie revolution, the band proves they have more to say than just “Goat teeth and the curse for this town,” like it did in the song “New Slang,” from The Shins’ 2001 debut CD, “Oh, Inverted World.”
Obviously, any fan of the band is already immune to the peculiarities that The Shins produce. However, for anyone new to the sound, it may come off as a bit grating at first.
Packed with tambourine and cheesy-smiley voices — lead singer James Mercer’s voice sometimes has a fake edge to it — it is sometimes hard to take the boys seriously. But then Mercer brings it down in daunting and lethargic sets such as “Sleeping Lessons” and “Black Wave.”
“So we just skirt the hallway signs, a phantom and a fly, follow the lines and wonder why, There’s no connection,” Mercer sings in the chorus for the first single from the album entitled “Phantom Limb.” Like most of the other lyrics on the album, these lines have no connection with anything; they simply do not make sense.
There is no need for a rock band to be the Proust or Aristotle for this generation. Many people do not listen to words anyway, but if they are just a befuddled mess there is the point in making music in the first place.
To some, this disc may be only noise trying desperately to sound ridiculously smart. But with a lot of patience and perseverance, the sounds that may at first disagree with the ears can soon bend to the will The Shins is asking of them.
“Wincing” may not be as good as the group’s past two albums, but as growing, melding and trying new things is what a good band should do, it is an commendable effort and worth listening to — if not for content, then just for pure nerve and curiosity.
01-25-2007