The Shins - Disc of the day

The Shins
Oh, Inverted World

(Sub Pop, 2001)

The New Smiths are from New Mexico. Who knew? Why, Jonathan Poneman!

This week is Sub Pop Week on MOJO4music.com, and our Discs Of The Day will be some of our favourite releases from that worthy label...

I thought Garden State, the off-beat indie rom-com, was a turgid piece of rambling twaddle. However, amid all the half-baked soul searching, two tracks from The Shins’ Sub Pop debut provided a welcome break from the endless “who am I?” platitudes. The Albuquerque quartet had reached the SP stable in 2000, quickly recording this bittersweet, 30-minute collection of golden guitar-pop ditties. It’s easy to view Oh, Inverted World as a mere warm-up for the bravura shimmers of 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow and last year’s Wincing The Night Away, but this record’s minimal instrumentation spotlights the central, most beguiling tenet of the band’s sound. James Mercer’s voice, a clear-cut holler that gives the lonely-street strum of New Slang a Ray Davies warmth, ensures what could be misconstrued as an album of throwaway indie-pop is anything but. His is a singular voice, often muddying The Shins’ crystalline waters with such visceral epithets as, “Shut out, pimpled and angry / I quietly tied all my guts into knots”. Seven years on, with a shedload of record sales in the bank, The Shins’ tenure at Sub Pop is coming to an end, but their part in the second decade of the label’s history was key.

Ross Bennett

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 03/07/2008