Review of Wincing the Night Away (The Shins)

7.7 out of 10

The opening notes to Wincing the Night Away by The Shins tell you right off the bat that this album is going to be different. A departure, if you will, from the glorious shining pop gems that James Mercer and Gang gave us on their first two albums (2001’s Oh! Inverted World and 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow). Excited listeners are greeted with Sleeping Lessons’ spacey synthesizers and Mercer’s lead vocals run through an echo box. Instruments slowly build upon one another to a climax, when, two minutes into the first song, all is right with the world again. It’s rollicking fun as we tumble over ourselves down a grassy hill giggling all the way down. Grass stains on the knees of your jeans serve as evidence. Blast off. The Shins are back.

Or are they? The album itself jumps back and forth from song to song and occasionally within each song between the old Shins you loved and the new Shins you are trying to figure out. Gone are the guitar driven pop songs from the first two albums; replaced by songs with the same simple structures covered up with those spacey synths and strings mentioned earlier. The album debuted at an astonishing #2 on the Billboard Top 200, but reviews from the establishment have been decidedly mixed. Some like it, some don’t. This is The Shins’ new “mature” album.

Evolution is the inevitable calling of most bands. Artists get bored and critics and fans want something new as a measure of authenticity. The Beatles, and more recently, bands like Wilco and Beck, have been lauded as successful examples of rock bands unwilling to rest on their laurels – always pushing the envelope and making new sounds. This is The Shins’ attempt to do the same. They are tired of being stuck in the time warp of new slang created by Natalie Portman and Zach Braff. The problem is that songwriters too often mistake “different” with “evolution.” They are not synonyms. Is this fooling anyone else?

It’s hard enough to write the perfect pop song. Or a hook to hang a grin on. Or dylanesque lines that don’t seem to make sense when you first hear them, but lead to epiphanies a week later when you are watching the countryside pass by on a commuter train to work (e.g., “A tool redevised to make sinking stones fly”). And that’s what James Mercer has always done best. As a result, the highest highs on this album, at least to this listener, end up being the moments when the Shins sounds like the Shins of old (e.g., Phantom Limb, Red Rabbits, Turn on Me and Australia).

This is an album of great songs by a band that is clearly comfortable in its skin. James Mercer sings with more confidence than on either of the previous two efforts. You can tell that Sub Pop Records gave them lots of knobs to turn and buttons to push in the studio. It works in many cases; falls a bit short in others (e.g., Sea Legs, Spilt Needles and Black Wave).

The best songs on this album are bigger. There is more room to throw elbows. You can close your eyes and float away with these songs. Especially on the George Harrison-esque vocals in “A Comet Appears.” This last song on the album is the perfect combination of old and new – “the wind from a wasp could blow them into the sea, with stones on their feet, lost to the light and the loving we need” – followed by the fluttering of guitars lifting you high above. A bird’s eye view of longing, virtue, and a forest of bygones.

This is a good album. A very good album in fact. The album only suffers from the near perfection of the two that preceded it. Not the place to start for new converts, but the perfect place for veterans of The Shins to crawl under a blanket on a cold winter's day. Throw on some heavy wool socks. Close your eyes. Have fun.