The Shins – Wincing The Night Away

The Shins
Wincing The Night Away

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the post office box the other day. I got the new Shins release Wincing The Night Away in the mail… I guess it’s not such a FUNNY thing, but I’d thought that with all the lack of coverage at Palebear that I’d been booted off their promo list. It seems like every other blog (and their mom) had this release already. Good to know I’m still on the list, albeit at low priority. =)

Anyhow, too much has probably been written about the new record. I’ve surreptitiously been avoiding reading about it. You probably just want to know: is it worth picking up. The answer so far, in the 10 listens since I received it, is generally Yes. I can hear the Shinfanatics yelling at me now.

I guess it just didn’t grab me as hard as Inverted World or Chutes did right away. Sure, you’ve got your anthemic hits like “Phantom Limb” and “Turn On Me” which will always elevate them high in indie hearts. But it took a full 5 listens to get into many of the other songs. The quirkiness which has always been their strong suit is definitely still there. But in my opinion it’s often overly squandered on the louder material. “Sleeping Lessons” contains an interesting Air-like arpeggio mapped onto a double time snare-fest worthy of the Interpol or the White Stripes. “Australia” bounces along quite nicely, but “Pam Berry” is basically just a gratuitous Dick Dale Pulp Fiction surf line. “Sea Legs” sounds like a Beck outtake, while “Girl Sailor” is also an outtake but of the Belle and Sebastian variety.

James Mercer definitely hasn’t lost any of that higher-than-high windpipe power, which should please longtime Shins fans. The album sounds a little more produced this time around as well; it was recorded partially by Seattle’s Phil Ek although the band still did some of the recording themselves. “Red Rabbits” and “Black Wave” contains that really entertaining toy-shop slow-jam feel that originally attracted me to The Shins in the first place. Spacey nuggets with reverb, strings and xylophone: these are the songs that I’ve come to expect from them – but they were past the midpoint of the album.

OK, here’s the real truth. I did like Wincing The Night Away quite a bit. However, I was COMPLETELY distracted and bitten by the smitten-bug with the other Sub Pop release I received: Loney, Dear. So the Shins got a little screwed – their release was one of the few I was definitely waiting at the post office to get, but they got upstaged a bit. What does the Swedish “band” (one guy, Emil Svanangen) Loney, Dear sound like? That’s the topic for another day.

Available Tracks:

Phantom Limb

Band Website:

The Shins on Sub Pop

by Palebear