From the Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2001 issue

Columns

It's My Party

by Kathleen Wilson

When Creed first began to regularly assault the airwaves, I imagined Eddie Vedder checking himself every time the band's ubiquitous hit "Higher" was played. "When did we do this?" "How much red wine did I drink before playing that radio show in Auckland?" "I thought Scott Weiland was still in stir!" Now he's got to deal with Patricia O'Callaghan, whose album of covers, Real Emotional Girl, has just been released on Warner Bros. label Teldec. The 30-year-old Canadian actress/singer covers Kurt Weill and Leonard Cohen liberally (and Randy Newman, obviously), lending her operatic training to each. O'Callaghan also takes a stab at Pearl Jam's "Better Man," and believe me when I tell you that no stretch of the imagination can even begin to fathom the abomination that is her version of Vedder's composition. IT'S AWFUL. And of course it has been stuck in my head (especially the portion that gets "rockin'") for days. I'm afflicted. I may die from it, actually.

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No, what may very well kill me is all the head-scratching I've been doing lately over Dave Grohl's career. Just whom did he blow? There was that single spawned of the X-Files movie. Then David Letterman declared the Foo Fighters to be his favorite band and invited them to play his show on the night of his return from bypass surgery. This no doubt led to the band's song "Next Year" being made the theme for the Letterman-produced NBC weekly television show Ed. Now I flick on VH1's coverage of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2001 induction ceremony and I'm treated to the sight of Dave Grohl filling in for Freddie Mercury as Queen plays. What next? A remake of The Sound of Music featuring the von Grohl family?

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I know I've been hard on Sub Pop of late, but if the folks in the know are to be trusted (and in this case I'm positive they are), the label is about to put out the best album of its rocky history. The Shins' Oh, Inverted World is due out in June, and judging from the buzz on the early listenings, the disc is a shoo-in to be everyone's essential summer soundtrack. The Shins are based in Albuquerque, Mew Mexico (a hellhole where I once spent six days surrounded by 10,000 Honda Goldwing enthusiasts, and one night in the filthiest bar west of CBGB's--no duct tape on the toilet seats, thank God, but filthy, disgusting commodes nonetheless). The band creates rapturous-sounding pop that swoops and sparkles and raises the hair on your arms like all truly amazing pop should. They'll be compared to everyone from the Beach Boys to Simon and Garfunkel to Magnetic Fields, and no stretch of the imagination combining the aforementioned can prepare you for the beauty of the Shins' sound, considering this is their first big record. I saw them in Tucson (another hellhole in which I spent a summer week, discovering only too late that my hotel was actually an undercover whorehouse) last June when they opened for Modest Mouse and was more than sufficiently blown away, even though I was three dozen sheets to the wind. If you want to hear what all the commotion is about before June, you can hunt down the Sub Pop single "New Slang" b/w "Sphagnum Esplanade," or you can visit www.artisdead.net/theshins/main.html or www.omnibusrecords.com for links to other recorded material and ordering information. OR you could just head on down to Sit & Spin on Friday, March 30, when the Shins open for 764-HERO. If you've spent any time in the last year at the Cha Cha when 764-HERO frontman John Atkins has been bartending, then you've no doubt heard the Shins already, as Atkins is a passionate fan of the band.

kathleen@thestranger.com