We're standing inside Portland club the Blackbird, surrounded by screaming, drunken voices on a late August evening. It's the night of the Sandy Blvd. club's thinly veiled "Super Special Secret Show"--where the Shins are to publicly debut new material from their upcoming Sub Pop release, Chutes Too Narrow.
At midnight, the mundane, fizzy butterfly sounds of openers All Girl Summer Fun Band are near an end and giddy Shins fans crush the air out of each other inside the oddly angular venue. We retreat outside due to the smoky human smush, waiting for the Shins to clamber on stage and reveal their follow-up tunes to 2001's art-pop success story, Oh, Inverted World. But as soon as waves of shattering drums and grinding, timeless big-beat guitars flow through the walls, we hustle back inside.
Over the course of their set, the Shins' new songs seem strangely juxtaposed against the slightly older, cryptic, and more linear confections that were played just as feverishly before them. As this show demonstrates publicly for the first time, Chutes often sounds nothing like the first album; there is no "niche" it can fall into, standing tall with 10 mature, sincere, multilayered songs. Perhaps best represented by the emotionally gaping opener, "Kissing the Lipless," and the first single, "So Says I," the album may have certain genre bases to its various musical styles, but it also has a consistently unique idiosyncratic quality, akin to the glory days of post-punk art-pop (XTC, later Elvis Costello).
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The night of their Blackbird show, the band were on the eve of returning to a relentless tour schedule, but they stayed out late, grilling and drinking. The next day, James Mercer, lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, etc. and his friendly bandmates seem completely awake for our questions, though--if not without a certain anxious guardedness.
"Why do you think you were a dork in high school?" we obnoxiously thrust at the unshaven, scholarly handsome Mercer, in reference to press-kit material.
"Oh, I don't know why," he replies dryly. "The typical reasons."
We all sit together on shallow stone steps between two mausoleum-like sheds in downtown Portland. Trees cover us as afternoon traffic squeals past.
"You're either a dork or an asshole," sweet-humored and cherubic keyboard player Marty Crandall offers. "I was a dork in high school, too."
"Dork, as well," adds Dave Hernandez (ex-Scared of Chaka, Broadcast Oblivion), who played bass for the first 10 shows of the Shins' existence, and recently replaced longtime member Neal Langford to record and tour with the band for Chutes.
"I think all the good people didn't enjoy high school too much," Mercer offers as possible explanation. "I graduated in 1989," he adds, i mplying that it's been awhile and he hasn't thought about it much.
"Do you like your fans?" we ask.
There is some nervous quiet.
"I don't know too many of them, actually," Mercer answers with a very subtle smirk. "Hopefully, they're good people."
"I like them all!" Hernandez exclaims.
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"It seemed as if, if you looked too long at the speakers, the music might disappear," fellow Albuquerque transplant Brad Beshaw says about the music of Flake (then Flake Music, due to typical moniker legal conflicts), an earlier incarnation of the Shins. "It was recorded at such a low level."
Beshaw is the thin, charismatic owner of Confounded Books here in Seattle. Several years ago his band Luxo Champ was set to play a house show on Mesa Street with Flake. "The Albuquerque scene was a big family centered around this house, and the musicians who worked at Fred's Bread and Bagel," Beshaw recalls.
After that night, Beshaw and Flake became friends. Much of that connection had to do with two things: The band was made up of "really nice guys, and they were really talented," he explains.
"All the bands in Albuquerque sounded different," Beshaw says, "though the scene was insular and the musicians traded roles between each band. But everybody went to Flake shows."
While Flake had a simpler, more ethereal sound than what would become the Shins, the band's most significant evolution came through a change of intentions.
"It was all there to start with. James' voice was always beautiful," Beshaw says affectionately, "and his songwriting was flawless. I was really happy to see him get serious and go for it. I'm a real fan of their first record."
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It was his father's love for music that turned Mercer on to an eclectic mix of rock and pop growing up, including the Beatles and the Steve Miller Band--though he himself never became the kind of fan "that buys every album of every artist I like. I love the records I own, but I don't try to own everything. There's a lot of Echo & the Bunnymen records I don't need to have--Smiths records I don't need to own."
One Echo & the Bunnymen album that definitely had an influence on Mercer's own talents was the dramatic Ocean Rain, and when asked about it his eyes light up.
"I lucked out buying it," he explains. "I had no idea about them or anything. I think it's their best record."
Mercer probably bought it from Bow Wow, Albuquerque's one great record store, according to Crandall, who worked there during that time. "It closed down a year ago," the keyboardist mentions sadly.
Crandall continues to live in Albuquerque, whereas Mercer, Langford, and drummer Jesse Sandoval all moved to Portland over the past few years (Hernandez lives in Seattle). Crandall has been considering moving to Portland, though, as his relationship with model Elyse Sewell ("third-place runner-up on the television program America's Next Top Model 2003") could be relocated anywhere by the nature of her career. But the lifestyle change has been causing him some internal conflict as he nears 30--not unlike the strife that inspired Mercer when he wrote and developed his recording skills for the band's debut.
"I was at kind of a crossroads there, yeah," Mercer admits. "It was the late-20s thing... what Marty's going through, and definitely what Jesse's going through right now... it's like your whole life seems to be turned upside down. And then you start anew. And that's kind of where the first album was."
Was it a transitional panic of sorts?
"Yeah, maybe. You just feel you have to get rid of everything.... I'm happier lately, and not writing a lot of those super-melancholy songs."
When we offer the opinion that Chutes actually felt more serious, and not necessarily happier either, Mercer seems a bit thrown.
"I'm not really able to tell..." he muses. "There's been a little bit of growth in that area, but I don't know...."
The Shins are at an interesting point in their career--possibly the most exciting place they'll ever know. Thrilled but not thrown by the massive ("indie rock" level) sales of World, which sold 90,000 copies, they have done the exact opposite of what "lesser" bands have been criticized for. Instead of "going pop," they've added more bite, the kind of edge that poet Delmore Schwartz said came from responsibilities beginning in dreams.
Beloved workaholic producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Modest Mouse) is helping out on a Les Savy Fav seven-inch when we call to ask about the recording of Chutes.
"The new album was about 70 percent done when it came to Avast [studios]," Ek says. "At first, I just thought I was going to mix it when it was done. I kept talking to James, working on it at his house in Portland, getting ready to book for mixing it, and he kept saying, 'I don't know if I'm ready yet.'"
(When asked if he's a perfectionist, Mercer says, "No, I just take a lot of time to create songs." When Crandall and Hernandez are asked the same question, they admit that he is--Hernandez adding, "But I think James has a lot of intuition and spontaneity." Mercer asserts, "If you stress too much over shit, it shows. And then it's less honest, or something.")
"Chutes was a blast to record, though it was a ton of work," Ek divulges. "James came up with the sprawling material he and Jesse played, that we had to chop together... and just in general added a ton of vocals and guitars."
The use of Mercer's delightfully oscillating vocal range, Crandall's ebullient keyboards, and the inspired rhythm work of Sandoval and Hernandez will probably continue to incite lazy critical references to the Beach Boys. But Ek thinks of them more in the strange "chamber beat" category of the rock-aesthetic Zombies. He also feels a lot of Smiths in the sound. And while the varied production techniques in haunting songs like "Saint Simon" may show an intricate progress in the band's design, Ek doesn't think the overall effect is that much different than the first record.
"It's more mature--more rocking, definitely," Ek sums up, sounding pleased by the results.
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"I think that you eventually get a little bit more confidence, and you go, 'Hey, this is good,' and you don't have to freak out as much. I think a lot of it is just getting older. I made this decision when I was 28, when I quit my job and moved...."
Mercer is finally opening up during our conversation in Portland, shedding much of his initial aloofness. And as our time dwindles, he seems intent on offering a more genuine explanation of himself as a songwriter and a person. But he is still cryptic--naked in disguise, just like his songs.
"It's a big stressful thing. You have these things in your life you know you need to change, but they're difficult to change, and it's just like stress builds and builds until finally, 'It's over, I'm done.' My life seems to be a perpetual cycle of those build-ups of things that needed changing till they burst!"
But who are you trying to connect with?
"One of the things that drives me is just wanting to impress my peers, my fellow bandmates, and other bands that we love," Mercer states. "I think that's sort of a big drive. And the audience... of course, we would love the people to love our music."
It's an almost indiscernible tone of contempt that creeps into his voice during that remark, but apparent enough to discern from an innocent verbal pause. And it's at that moment that we finally see through the "wall," and realize Mercer's heroic nature. He doesn't care to pander or submit to an invisible, fickle herd. The reaction to his work by someone who has earned his respect is important, but it would seem primarily in the sense of honest trade. To him, the intellectual looters are still just looters. Mercer is a genuine craftsman, and he works for the sake of the work, creates for his own gratification and respect, and owns what he makes without apologies.
The idea of him apologizing for such a healthy and noble form of egotism seems especially crass as we watch him sit in comfortable, attractive indignation. James Mercer intends to think for himself, and doesn't brook sheep on any level--artistic, political, or social. Although we get the distinct impression that what that means in specifics is respectably none of our business.
Still, we press him. But engaging people? Is that a concern?
"What do you mean by engaging them?" Mercer asks, eyebrows furling, his smile a little crooked. "Touching their hearts? I don't know, I don't really think about that very much, actually. I just sort of enjoy writing and playing. There are certainly songs on this record that are more direct. And there's less metaphor maybe on some songs. And there's [a new level of honesty] in there with all the cryptic metaphors, too. There's a little more directness....
"We're surprised by [the success of the first record]," he continues. "We've done really well, and hopefully the next one will be as impressive as the first. I'm sure that there are people who are able to write songs for some type of target audience--well, obviously, there are people who do that and make millions of dollars--but I don't think I have that ability. It's kind of like I've got to write what's moving me, and that's it. You know? I don't really criticize those people who do that stuff--that's just an ability I don't have." He pauses and adds, "I don't know if I would use it if I had it."
Leaving Portland, listening to Chutes again in the car, we didn't know if Mercer could write million-selling songs either, but we were sure that we agreed with him that at this point in the band's thoughtful musical progression, questions like that no longer matter.
The Shins' new album, Chutes Too Narrow, comes out on Sub Pop on Oct 21.
Chris Estey & Jason Dodd are editors at Bandoppler magazine.
