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Music reviews |
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
A more consistent, accessible effort from these masters of the 3-minute pop song.
Sub Pop
Release date: 10/21/03
Rating: B+1. Kissing the Lipless 3:19
- (mp3 from Sub Pop)
2. Mine's Not a High Horse 3:20
3. So Says I 2:48
- (mp3 from Sub Pop)
4. Young Pilgrim 2:47
5. Saint Simon 4:25
6. Fighting in a Sack 2:26
7. Pink Bullets 3:53
8. Turn a Square 3:11
9. Gone for Good 3:13
10. Those to Come 4:24When the Shins’ debut album, Oh, Inverted World, came out in 2001, I’ll admit I had trouble understanding the Albuquerque band’s near-universal appeal. The critics went nuts over the record (most praising the hard-to-miss Brian Wilson influences), the band developed a passionate cult following, and, well, I couldn’t figure it out.
Whenever I put the record on, I heard a couple of likable songs, a hook here and there, but mainly just jangly, nothing-new-here melodies, reedy vocals, some deliberately elliptical lyrics (like that album title – and the band’s name) and some rather fingernails-on-the-blackboard misses. I eventually found much that, after repeated listens, revealed itself to be truly great – “New Slang,” “Girl on the Wing,” a couple of others are pop gems hidden in the album’s murky production. But I was never able to find anything I’d even want to include on a mix CD, so I eventually tossed Oh, Inverted World on my pile of white-boy-indie-pop-records-that-the-critics-love-and-is-obviously-well-made-but-I-just-can’t-get-into, alongside Spoon, the Walkmen, the Microphones, Mercury Rev, even Radiohead’s post-Kid A output.
Now that I’ve established that I’m a total philistine, let me say that I actually like Chutes Too Narrow quite a bit. It’s largely in the same vein as Oh, Inverted World – 2-to-3-minute guitar-based songs that sound too simple to be chamber pop but are actually quite complex. Stripped-down sound, major chords galore. There’s lots of “ba-ba-bas” but also some very sophisticated lyrics (where else lately have you heard a song with a shout-out to Sir Thomas More?).
Despite the similarities, Chutes Too Narrow is far less coy than the Shins’ last record: it reveals itself, and grabs you more firmly, upon its first few listens. The band almost seems to be playing its instruments more confidently, with even some extended solos (like the gorgeous guitar on the countryish “Gone for Good”) and vocalist/songwriter James Mercer is much more prominent in the mix – you can hear the lyrics! A lot of this probably owes to Phil Ek's production, which is light-years better than the mix of Oh, Inverted World. Though not a great analogy, it’s sort of like going from Murmur to Document in one step. Chutes is more accessible – enough to set the Shins apart from most of the other critical-fave bands I mentioned above – but still unlike most everything out there.
The in-your-face attack of the opener, “Kissing the Lipless,” would have sounded very out of place on the last album, and that’s a compliment. With “Mine’s Not a High Horse,” the Shins finally have a mix-CD worthy pop classic – one of a few on the record. It’s weird to find yourself singing along to a cockeyed lyric like “You’ve got them all on your side, that just makes more for doubt to slaughter. “I never new he thought that!” I head you say falling out of the van?” But Mercer pulls it off well.
To the group’s credit, they don’t jam the record with filler, there’s only A-list stuff here, even if that means the disc clocks in at only 33:46. Don’t miss the already mentioned songs plus “Young Pilgrims,” an acoustic romp about “this side of me that wants to grab the yoke from the pilot and fly the whole mess into the sea,” whatever that means. “Turn a Square” finds the Shins in sixties-homage mode again, with terrific effects. Probably the only song I could do without is the shuffling “Saint Simon” (which probably means the critics will like that one best).
The one negative – and it’s one shared by nearly all who limit themselves to the 3-minute pop format, even masters like the New Pornographers, Fountains of Wayne, all those Elephant 6 bands – is its forgettabilty. It’s the reason why, nearly forty years later, people listen to the White Album a lot more than “With the Beatles.” The songs on Chutes Too Narrow are catchy and fun, and masterfully crafted, but not particularly compelling. There’s an emotional detachment: the Shins don’t try to make you feel anything, they don’t take you on a fantastic musical journey. They’re just nice to have around. So even though I like it now, I doubt I’ll be giving Chutes Too Narrow a lot of spins in 2013; it will long have been replaced by other stuff, including the Shins’ future work.
But enough of that, it’s an easy criticism to make and it applies to nearly everybody. The Shins have given us a decent first album and a fantastic second album, even though the sound itself hasn’t evolved significantly. We can expect a lot more from them, and I look forward to hearing it, now that I “get it”…
