The Shins
Insomnia & Crack
2007-10-22
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Sometimes things keep you up at night: mulling over a relationship gone awry, work stress, living next to a crack house and being robbed, as was apparently the case for The Shins’ James Mercer. So it’s not so surprising that listening to The Shins can resemble a late-night conversation with a best friend on some sleepless night: sincere, revealing, dark secret kind of stuff only shared with those closest, and Mercer seems as candid in conversation — he is his songs.
Mercer has turned many a memorable phrase, transforming heart-on-sleeve emotions into clever refrains, and The Shins’ appropriately titled third album, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop), is no exception. Wincing... is indelibly gorgeous, proving once again the Shins are one of the best bands to emerge this side of the millennium, with winsome melodies, intelligent lyrics, universal appeal and a timeless quality. There’s homage to rock’s great past (infectious sing-along harmonies) coupled with a fresh perspective that can only speak to modern heartbreak. On this outing, songs are immersed in adventurous arrangements (the funky vibes of “Sea Legs” or the Motown-tinge of “Turn on Me”) adding depth, richness and touches of psychedelia.
There’s also an underlying spookiness that was visceral, as Mercer reveals. It’s been a long four-year wait between albums, but as Mercer explains, Wincing the Night Away is all the better for it.
What was the story behind all the release date hold-ups?
I think partly me underestimating the time it was going to take to finish the record. I had an especially difficult time putting the lyrics together. I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to write about, and I don’t think I had quite worked it out…sort of process everything that had gone on in my life since Chutes Too Narrow came out, and so I was just having a difficult time articulating things. I went through a whole bunch of stuff that I could kind of quickly summarize for you, if you’d like.
Please do.
I bought a house from before Chutes Too Narrow came out. That was my dream, to own a house. I bought this place; unfortunately there was a crack house next door, I was dealing with that. The cops ended up raiding the house and the crack dealers actually blamed me for that. It was pretty stressful, and I would go on tours, you know, and then the house got robbed. Oh, Inverted World was stolen: the masters, the original recordings, the whole thing is gone. Even my backups they found. They had hours and hours and hours to peruse my house. Then I had a relationship that dissolved. I had, you know, just a lot of changes, through all of that stressful stuff and the end of this particular relationship, which was kind of messy. I made mistakes, and I had a hard time dealing with some of my friends as well through this time. All of that was sort of stuff I needed to figure out before I was able to really write intelligently about it, I guess. And maybe what the writing reflected was me going through that process of ingesting everything and having some sort of perspective on it.
On songs such as “Sea Legs” and “Red Rabbits” there is darker imagery, whereas “Sleeping Lessons” or “A Comet Appears” suggest positive imagery. Was spirituality something that was prevalent for you on this album?
I think I struggle with really understanding what spirituality is. My upbringing was sort of just a late attempt to teach me, to bring me into the Catholic faith, and I think it started when I was about 7 years old, and I think I actually — I think it was kind of too late by then. Sunday school just seemed comic bookish: The type of things that they were trying to put across to me — the devil, and the end of the world and all these characters you know — it just seemed like Saturday morning cartoons in a way.
“Sea Legs,” the verses are really about this new love and then the choruses are sort of a reminder. It’s like, “When that dead moon rises again” this sort of ominous…dread of the negative, the dark side of life. And then “Red Rabbits,” I see what you’re talking about because there’s reference to the “ghost in the hall,” and its spooky sort of production… I think there is sort of this spirituality in that there’s something supernatural referred to once in a while. I suppose there is both [positive and dark] on the record. There’s a sense of spookiness, and I actually was feeling that way.
It’s funny, but I think that going through all of that very, very stressful stuff, there’s a part of me that actually started to suspect that something was controlling it. I know that sounds crazy, but you get superstitious. You feel it seeping into you… I began to, at times, have the feeling, the feeling of spookiness that you have when you’re in the basement and you turn off the light and you run up the stairs. I began to have that feeling in a subtle way, once in a while, just during daylight hours.
That’s what keeps you up at night, too.
Yeah, exactly. You know I was just going through a lot of stressful things at once, and it’s funny how that starts to work on your brain…but it added this really sort of rich character to the things I was writing,
I think.
“Phantom Limb” is about a fictional lesbian couple. What inspired taking the viewpoint of characters that would appear so different than what your experiences would be?
What I was feeling from the music is this feeling of alienation and angst and also just passion, sort of this feeling of love, something romantic you know — especially the sort of exultant quality of the bridge and the outro. I don’t know why, but I was immediately sort of put into a teenage mindset. It was sort of a nostalgic feeling. Maybe because I drew a lot from the bands that I liked in high school [Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine] through the song… It just fit in my head that that would be something that you’d feel when you were both so alienated, you also felt you had to hide this huge part of your life and didn’t know how to deal with it, just all of that frustration and fear and then the love—and the release from all of that when you found that—when you found a conspirator.
A lot of your lyrics feel very literary in nature. Has there ever been a particular book that tinged into a song?
I’m always reading a novel… I think just stylistically I’ve learned about the use of metaphor from writers…descriptive metaphors and stuff, I just love that—when they’re well done. So what I’m thinking of right now is Capote, he seems to just nail that stuff so well, and Don DeLillo was really impressive to me.
The record incorporates more spacey elements and psychedelic touches. Was that an overt shift for you?
There is some sort of psychological effect that those sounds have on me that I really enjoy, and I think on Chutes Too Narrow I really wanted to get drier, and I wanted to get songs to stand on their own. This time I think I was missing that; I wanted to experiment some more with sort of interesting production ideas and things that just sounded sort of fantastical.
There’s been much said about the band’s growth in popularity with the inclusion of your songs in Garden State. There’s also been a lot written about commercialism and bands. Now that you are more known, how does one find balance between overexposure and underexposure?
I do understand the thing where, you know…like for instance when I put on my Kinks records, oftentimes I’ll skip over the ones I hear all the time on the commercials. It would suck if that’s how you became as a band. The ideal thing is to be creating this music and having teenagers basically, or anyone who’s a real music fan, I guess, sitting there and putting on the record and just really getting into it and not having any sort of a bias when they hear it. So, I think that you have to be careful about how much you allow licensing of your songs.
One thing I do get worried about, you don’t want to go over the Malcolm Gladwell Tipping Point thing — become something that’s, I don’t know, so everywhere that it no longer has any real meaning. I mean, because even bands like Jet and stuff, I wouldn’t know about them if it weren’t for their TV commercials…and maybe I would’ve liked them more, or I would’ve taken them more seriously. So I worry about that, you know, and it’s unfortunate. I’m sure that they benefited financially, obviously, but you know then they also… You want to be a real band.
This is the final album left on your current contract with Sub Pop. What’s your next step?
I think that we are hoping to do something creative and new and just something that is lucrative and something where we can maintain this creative freedom that Sub Pop has allowed us, so who knows. I mean Sub Pop has been so good to us, and maybe we’ll figure out something with them. Maybe there’s a major label out there who will fit the bill, but I don’t know. Major labels are scary — goddamn scary. They just accidentally destroy you…something weird will happen. Sometimes the A&R guy who signed [you] will get fired and then they stop paying attention to [you]. It’s just random. They’re just such big corporations.
After all those difficult changes, a presumably positive change in your life is you recently got married. Much of your material has been culled from difficult relationships, will marriage change your approach to lyrics?
That is kind of interesting, because I’ve made good use of some pretty rough relationships. I don’t know, we’ll see. I suppose there’s a lot of other things to write about, figure out, you know. I just have to write about what’s on my mind — and there always seems to be something.
Mercer has turned many a memorable phrase, transforming heart-on-sleeve emotions into clever refrains, and The Shins’ appropriately titled third album, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop), is no exception. Wincing... is indelibly gorgeous, proving once again the Shins are one of the best bands to emerge this side of the millennium, with winsome melodies, intelligent lyrics, universal appeal and a timeless quality. There’s homage to rock’s great past (infectious sing-along harmonies) coupled with a fresh perspective that can only speak to modern heartbreak. On this outing, songs are immersed in adventurous arrangements (the funky vibes of “Sea Legs” or the Motown-tinge of “Turn on Me”) adding depth, richness and touches of psychedelia.
There’s also an underlying spookiness that was visceral, as Mercer reveals. It’s been a long four-year wait between albums, but as Mercer explains, Wincing the Night Away is all the better for it.
What was the story behind all the release date hold-ups?
I think partly me underestimating the time it was going to take to finish the record. I had an especially difficult time putting the lyrics together. I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to write about, and I don’t think I had quite worked it out…sort of process everything that had gone on in my life since Chutes Too Narrow came out, and so I was just having a difficult time articulating things. I went through a whole bunch of stuff that I could kind of quickly summarize for you, if you’d like.
Please do.
I bought a house from before Chutes Too Narrow came out. That was my dream, to own a house. I bought this place; unfortunately there was a crack house next door, I was dealing with that. The cops ended up raiding the house and the crack dealers actually blamed me for that. It was pretty stressful, and I would go on tours, you know, and then the house got robbed. Oh, Inverted World was stolen: the masters, the original recordings, the whole thing is gone. Even my backups they found. They had hours and hours and hours to peruse my house. Then I had a relationship that dissolved. I had, you know, just a lot of changes, through all of that stressful stuff and the end of this particular relationship, which was kind of messy. I made mistakes, and I had a hard time dealing with some of my friends as well through this time. All of that was sort of stuff I needed to figure out before I was able to really write intelligently about it, I guess. And maybe what the writing reflected was me going through that process of ingesting everything and having some sort of perspective on it.
On songs such as “Sea Legs” and “Red Rabbits” there is darker imagery, whereas “Sleeping Lessons” or “A Comet Appears” suggest positive imagery. Was spirituality something that was prevalent for you on this album?
I think I struggle with really understanding what spirituality is. My upbringing was sort of just a late attempt to teach me, to bring me into the Catholic faith, and I think it started when I was about 7 years old, and I think I actually — I think it was kind of too late by then. Sunday school just seemed comic bookish: The type of things that they were trying to put across to me — the devil, and the end of the world and all these characters you know — it just seemed like Saturday morning cartoons in a way.
“Sea Legs,” the verses are really about this new love and then the choruses are sort of a reminder. It’s like, “When that dead moon rises again” this sort of ominous…dread of the negative, the dark side of life. And then “Red Rabbits,” I see what you’re talking about because there’s reference to the “ghost in the hall,” and its spooky sort of production… I think there is sort of this spirituality in that there’s something supernatural referred to once in a while. I suppose there is both [positive and dark] on the record. There’s a sense of spookiness, and I actually was feeling that way.
It’s funny, but I think that going through all of that very, very stressful stuff, there’s a part of me that actually started to suspect that something was controlling it. I know that sounds crazy, but you get superstitious. You feel it seeping into you… I began to, at times, have the feeling, the feeling of spookiness that you have when you’re in the basement and you turn off the light and you run up the stairs. I began to have that feeling in a subtle way, once in a while, just during daylight hours.
That’s what keeps you up at night, too.
Yeah, exactly. You know I was just going through a lot of stressful things at once, and it’s funny how that starts to work on your brain…but it added this really sort of rich character to the things I was writing,
I think.
“Phantom Limb” is about a fictional lesbian couple. What inspired taking the viewpoint of characters that would appear so different than what your experiences would be?
What I was feeling from the music is this feeling of alienation and angst and also just passion, sort of this feeling of love, something romantic you know — especially the sort of exultant quality of the bridge and the outro. I don’t know why, but I was immediately sort of put into a teenage mindset. It was sort of a nostalgic feeling. Maybe because I drew a lot from the bands that I liked in high school [Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine] through the song… It just fit in my head that that would be something that you’d feel when you were both so alienated, you also felt you had to hide this huge part of your life and didn’t know how to deal with it, just all of that frustration and fear and then the love—and the release from all of that when you found that—when you found a conspirator.
A lot of your lyrics feel very literary in nature. Has there ever been a particular book that tinged into a song?
I’m always reading a novel… I think just stylistically I’ve learned about the use of metaphor from writers…descriptive metaphors and stuff, I just love that—when they’re well done. So what I’m thinking of right now is Capote, he seems to just nail that stuff so well, and Don DeLillo was really impressive to me.
The record incorporates more spacey elements and psychedelic touches. Was that an overt shift for you?
There is some sort of psychological effect that those sounds have on me that I really enjoy, and I think on Chutes Too Narrow I really wanted to get drier, and I wanted to get songs to stand on their own. This time I think I was missing that; I wanted to experiment some more with sort of interesting production ideas and things that just sounded sort of fantastical.
There’s been much said about the band’s growth in popularity with the inclusion of your songs in Garden State. There’s also been a lot written about commercialism and bands. Now that you are more known, how does one find balance between overexposure and underexposure?
I do understand the thing where, you know…like for instance when I put on my Kinks records, oftentimes I’ll skip over the ones I hear all the time on the commercials. It would suck if that’s how you became as a band. The ideal thing is to be creating this music and having teenagers basically, or anyone who’s a real music fan, I guess, sitting there and putting on the record and just really getting into it and not having any sort of a bias when they hear it. So, I think that you have to be careful about how much you allow licensing of your songs.
One thing I do get worried about, you don’t want to go over the Malcolm Gladwell Tipping Point thing — become something that’s, I don’t know, so everywhere that it no longer has any real meaning. I mean, because even bands like Jet and stuff, I wouldn’t know about them if it weren’t for their TV commercials…and maybe I would’ve liked them more, or I would’ve taken them more seriously. So I worry about that, you know, and it’s unfortunate. I’m sure that they benefited financially, obviously, but you know then they also… You want to be a real band.
This is the final album left on your current contract with Sub Pop. What’s your next step?
I think that we are hoping to do something creative and new and just something that is lucrative and something where we can maintain this creative freedom that Sub Pop has allowed us, so who knows. I mean Sub Pop has been so good to us, and maybe we’ll figure out something with them. Maybe there’s a major label out there who will fit the bill, but I don’t know. Major labels are scary — goddamn scary. They just accidentally destroy you…something weird will happen. Sometimes the A&R guy who signed [you] will get fired and then they stop paying attention to [you]. It’s just random. They’re just such big corporations.
After all those difficult changes, a presumably positive change in your life is you recently got married. Much of your material has been culled from difficult relationships, will marriage change your approach to lyrics?
That is kind of interesting, because I’ve made good use of some pretty rough relationships. I don’t know, we’ll see. I suppose there’s a lot of other things to write about, figure out, you know. I just have to write about what’s on my mind — and there always seems to be something.
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