1) Name for You; 2) Painting a Hole; 3) Cherry Hearts; 4) Fantasy Island; 5) Mildenhall; 6) Rubber Ballz; 7) Half a Million; 8) Dead Alive; 9) Heartworms; 10) So Now What; 11) The Fear
Charmingly erratic and surprisingly consistent return, but also lacking in the sort of highlights you'd rave about whenever Mercer's got a new album out.
Key tracks: "Painting a Hole", "Dead Alive", "So Now What"
Port of Morrow saw James Mercer officially turn The Shins into a fully autocratic venture for his own whims, but it's the Shins album with the least of Mercer's own personality and that's in good part thanks to the radio-friendly big name production. Heartworms, then, sounds closer to what Mercer perhaps intended all along, tying his musical language inseparably together with his quirks and influences. It's self-produced, a whole lot more idiosyncratic than Port of Morrow and Mercer's pulled together a strictly limited number of collaborators to act as a band of sorts for when he needs something to sound like a group effort instead of pure studio craftsmanship. Its inspiration also stems from the whole spectrum of James' singer/songwriter past, The Shins' melodic jangles, his electronically oriented Broken Bells side project and the 1980s indie acts that he worships, and it splices them all together into a genuinely somewhat weird concoction; that at-first uncharacteristic cover art makes perfect sense in context because there's that streak of unpredictable surreality to Mercer's operations here.
I honestly have a lot of admiration for Heartworms conceptually and it's especially clear why if you spend a good time with Port of Morrow and then this album right afterwards: there's simply so much more excitement to what Mercer is doing here and the album is full of surprise. The main thing is that it, as in a blink of an eye Mercer can move from his trademark stylistics with e.g. the reliably Shins-like singalong ditty "Name for You" and the cosy acoustic daydreaming of "Mildenhall", to something as neurotic and twitchy as "Painting a Hole" or the string-swept resignment of "The Fear". There's a constant momentum to Heartworms that's the result of it being a jumble of influences and ideas which form a sum that makes a strange logic out of its disparate strands. It's the most varied album released under The Shins moniker so far
What's also apparent if you come into this directly after Port of Morrow is how Heartworms lacks a real stone cold classic or two, when even Port of Morrow had its title track and "The Rifle's Spiral" which kept you coming back to the album and contribute to why I do actually like that album to some extent despite how harsh I'm towards it here. Heartworms is arguably one of the most interesting Shins albums, but it's not got its own killer hit that Mercer has always managed to sneak into any album he's released. The closest we get is "Dead Alive", a throwback to the early Shins sound laced with a barking mad Halloween spookiness twist which works incredibly well - but as fun as it is it's not the kind of first place trophy song that becomes synonymous with the Mercer project it's associated with and draws you back in. I like plenty of songs on Heartworms - "Mildenhall" is quaintly heartwarming in its earnest and happily cheesy nostalgia, "So Now What" stretches the kind of lush centrepiece swoon moment most songs save for the finale into a full song length and it strikes a particular level of beautiful as it does so, and both "Painting a Hole" and "Half a Million" are great examples of the more hyperactive mad genius concoctions Mercer is comfortable cooking under the reimagined Shins. None of them are songs you'd rave about to anyone who cares to listen though. There's no "New Slang", no "Mine's Not a High Horse", no "The High Road" that you'd truly fall in love with and which would pull you into the album as a whole even when the rest doesn't match it, and while that might perhaps be a high ask it's something that Mercer has always been reliably solid with otherwise. Heartworms' curse is that while it's consistent, it also doesn't plateau particularly high. And then on the other hand, it houses a couple songs that are actual stinkers: the bubblegum float of "Fantasy Island" with its irritatingly coy chorus and the wishywashy indie-pop-by-numbers "Rubber Ballz" are probably the worst two songs in The Shins' back catalogue so far, going beyond plain forgettable and actually being a little annoying.
Heartworms is a decent album but it's the worst kind of decent album: one with the potential to be great. A lot of it is delightfully quirky and it marries well with the more conventionally Mercer-like songs, but it's all a step or two away from being something truly great, something that would stick around. During the Heartworms sessions Mercer had the bonkers idea of doing an alternative version of each and every song, one as the songs were 'intended' to be (i.e. the ones here) and another where he went completely wild and which he would later release as the companion album The Worm's Heart. The two are inseparably linked as much as I'd like to judge them on their own, and while Heartworms is the more cohesive and sensible of the two, some of the ideas from the alternative takes could have taken these songs to the next level when transported over and converted into the type of vision James had here. So not only is it an album with potential but you can practically touch that potential. But that's all could've would've should've, and the reality is that Heartworms is another appealing yet flawed album into The Shins canon - though at least you can give Mercer credit that he always lets you down in a different way, at least.
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