The Shins - Wincing The Night Away

There are few tried-and-true elements of pop songwriting, but you can always count on the pairing of a winning melody with a morbid (but sweetly sung) lyrical sentiment to prick up the ears. While The Smiths will forever hold the blue ribbon for said convention (“Girlfriend In A Coma,” aww!), The Shins' James Mercer seems up to the task of carrying the torch into the new millennium. As the leading light of the mid-00s soft-rock revival—and it's a crowded field to be sure—The Shins emphasize mellow chords and shambling rhythms ideally suited to soundtracking car commercials and prime-time soaps.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but new record Wincing The Night Away benefits immeasurably from the sometimes grim, unrepentantly ambivalent imagery that issues from Mercer’s knotty Southwestern head. Take the crystalline single “Phantom Limb,” which shot to the top of the download charts even though the song appears to be about drunken teen burglary. Or track 7, "Black Wave," which curls whooshing keyboards around a doleful guitar figure as Mercer’s disembodied voice ping-pongs between channels; it’s a slab of pure, unironized gloom, turning the phrase “looking on the brighter side” into a depressive mantra. And lilting closer "A Comet Appears" drifts by so breezily you don't notice until the fourth or fifth listen Mercer's singing "Let's carve my aging face off/fetch us a knife/start with my eyes/down so the lines form a grimacing smile." Ouch!

Not that Mercer’s gone all Alex Chilton on us; old-school fans can take heart that the bands’ ear for Britpoppy hooks is as sharp as ever. Mercer’s patented “oo-ooh”s sweeten the getting-old-sucks sentiment of “Australia” to just bearable, abetted by a bouncing Merseystyle rhythm; elsewhere, "Sea Legs" provides a welcome respite from the guitar-drums thing with a crunchy, lurching hip-hop beat and steely keyboard whining. In terms of pacing and diversity, Wincing is the most album-like set The Shins have come up with yet; check out how the minute-long oddity "Pam Berry" segues perfectly into "Phantom Limb"s girl-group bass intro.

The Shins’ rise from obscurity epitomized (and legitimized) several commonly perceived indie no-nos, first with the immediate sale of “New Slang” to a McDonald’s commercial and secondly with their embarrassing Zach Braff-ication in the indie-lite comedy Garden State. The exposure has paid off in spades; the day of its release, Wincing The Night Away was the 2nd-best-selling record on Amazon. But success is a double-edged sword: that fast-food burger money bought James Mercer a house in a run-down Portland neighborhood, where, according to an interview in Rolling Stone (Dec 06), the crack dealers next door mistook him for a narc and allegedly threatened to kill him. In the same interview, Mercer revealed that his newfound good fortunes have alienated most of his old friends. Despite their apparent ubiquity, The Shins still record in a basement. It may only be rock and roll, but Wincing The Night Away features some of the most lived-in music likely to be heard this year.