Stiff Recoil To Success

Indie bands with a sizeable cult following have two distinct reactions to unexpected commercial success. Some, like R.E.M. and Nirvana, use this to their advantage and become more successful. Others, most notably Pavement, decide on giving the mainstream audiences a gigantic middle finger by making a record that's impossible to market. I was curious to see how The Shins would react after being thrust into the mainstream consciousness by Garden State; they were far more cryptic and understated than R.E.M. were when they broke it big, but they did not possess Pavement's wry sense of humor or their desire to fuck with their fans' heads. James Mercer clearly knew this, so he followed neither path. With Wincing The Night Away, The Shins go out of their way to make a record that does not sound anything like The Shins.

Wincing The Night Away is probably most notable for its shift in the band's focus. Rather than craft tight, simple pop songs, they have chosen to focus more on atmosphere and texture. The result is something very similar to Yo La Tengo's more recent work. That's not to say that they've made a bunch of Mogwai songs; there is still some sense of economy. The album actually starts off with some of Mercer's better pop songs: "Sleeping Lessons", "Australia", and first single "Phantom Limb" all could have easily fit on to one of the previous two albums. After that, it gets kind of rough. "Sea Legs" drags on for five and a half minutes, and any listener can see that it should have been one or two minutes shorter. What is really disturbing about the second half, though, is the sameness of it all. Oh Inverted World had a detour right in the middle of the album that also doubled as a brilliant slice of indie pop, and Chutes Too Narrow only had one or two songs that really could have been expected from them. Wincing The Night Away attempts to be different, but it ends up sounding remarkably familiar, even if it isn't Shins-by-numbers.

Of course, it doesn't help that the songs themselves are fairly weak. Pretty much every song from "Sea Legs" onward is boring as all hell. There's very little on this record that is immediate. There are no major standout tracks, and the ones I have pointed out as standouts pale in comparison to "Kissing The Lipless" or "Caring Is Creepy." Perhaps Wincing The Night Away is a grower, though I highly doubt it. The Shins have managed to achieve what I thought was impossible: they have made a record that shuns commercial success by making it more streamlined.