Somewhere, sitting in a straight backed chair in a poorly lit dorm room on the red bricked campus of an expensive private liberal arts college in the sleepy Midwest, an English major is holding court before a group of eager young co-eds and hangers-on. Ensconced within a cloud of unfiltered cigarette smoke he announces that he has recently discovered something, a record (he says record), he thinks they might enjoy – actually he feels he may not be overstating his case when he declares that they must like it or else suffer the rest of their days being uncool. He lets it hang there for a moment, crosses his legs through second hand linen trousers, then signals his best freshman toady to press play. As the first song crackles to life; as he ashes into a potted plant; as he downs the last of his Chimay; as he squints to see his reflection smudged in the toaster oven; as his favorite freshman toady pines away; the English major feels a sharp pinch as his mind quietly implodes under the weight of realizing that he didn’t write any of these songs and, now that he’s heard them, he can’t.
Before you leap to the obvious though mistaken conclusion that our English major is a pretentious dick who is really me you should know that he is not me - and that he’s right. Sure, maybe you or I didn’t write these songs or any others that are very good. But what he’s really right about is the fact that you should like this album, and you probably will. And when you do you will feel cool.
I first heard The Shins shortly after the release of their 2001 debut "Oh, Inverted World." A friend purchased and returned the album after she decided it only sounded good in headphones. I thought this was a curious but plausible observation so I went down to my favorite record shop for a listen. The disc didn’t strike a chord with me at the time. I remember wondering how this friend, whose taste in music I admittedly knew little about beyond the Diana Krall disc I heard repeating itself for an entire day in her studio, ever picked up The Shins in the first place. It turns out she asked the savvy young staffers at her favorite record shop for a recommendation, something fresh and new. Voila.
Fast-forward three years to the 2004 indie hype machine’s pumping of "Chutes Too Narrow." Quite a bit had changed in the world, and then again not that much. A poet friend with whom I once discussed music asked if I had heard The Shins new cd. She seemed to want it the way love-sick teenagers wait wide-eyed for the phone to ring. As obnoxious as it sounds to mention that I have a poet friend, seeing a person dedicated to Verse craving a pop album this way carried more than a little cachet with me. I had in fact heard the album and had placed it atop my list of things to buy while my wife wasn’t looking. I vowed to find the disc on the cheap then slip a CD-R of it to my poet friend because what I really want is for people to like me, copyrights be damned. Of course neither of us could wait and we each paid full price. I believe it was worth it.
It’s been a month now and I understand the craving I saw in my friend. I can’t stop listening to this album. I think about it when it’s not playing and I put it on as soon as I get home, before I put down my bag or pee or anything. It’s in my iPod on repeat and it has replaced my daughter’s Music Together cassette in the car as the thing we play over and over and over again.
You’d think I’d feel a little guilty about such an obvious, escapist pop obsession, but I don’t. There are sugary, overtly literate moments that send me to that place in my mind reserved for Crowded House, but you have to admire anyone who can make the lines “After all these implements and texts designed by intellects; So vexed to find evidently there's just so much that hides” sound at all singable.
Every track offers some redeeming highlights, but standouts include the acoustic poetry of “Young Pilgrims” and the nostalgic teen-aged love grown-up of “Turn a Square.” There is a fun moment in “Gone for Good,” a swaying beer hall number toward the end of the album, when the All-American heartbreak of the line “Just leave the ring on the rail; For the wheels to nullify” is balanced by a cheeky nod to county music sap, rhyming love and dove while shoe-horning a plaintive “honey” into “You want to fight for this love; But honey you cannot wrestle a dove.” And you can’t either.
In the end this record overcomes it’s own smarty-pants literacy to sound fresh, thoroughly formed and memorable. It’s not quite enough to make me go back and buy “Oh, Inverted World,” but I’m keeping my eyes open for news of a third release, which I hope to enjoy as much as I do “Chutes Too Narrow.” Oh, who am I kidding, I’ll have picked up “Oh, Inverted World” before this finishes spell-check.
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