1) Sleeping Lessons; 2) Australia; 3) Pam Berry; 4) Phantom Limb; 5) Sealegs; 6) Red Rabbits; 7) Turn on Me; 8) Black Wave; 9) Spilt Needles; 10) Girl Sailor; 11) A Comet Appears
The Shins expand their sound and give more space for their signature melodies to grow in. This is what they had been building for and now it's here and it's wonderful.
Key tracks: "Phantom Limb", "Turn on Me", "A Comet Appears"
The bubbling synths that open "Sleeping Lessons" are forever ingrained in my head. It was the first song - I think - I heard from The Shins, when the reviews for Wincing the Night Away were doing rounds and one of them helpfully contained a link to the song; for whatever reason that opening brings that era of my life into my mind so tightly, more than anything else on this record. The whimsically dreamy start to the song is a fun red herring though, because shortly after the song explodes into one of The Shins' most rollicking, hectic bangers. The song grows into full bloom, and listened to in retrospect after I had become familiar with The Shins' other albums, the band themselves did the same on Wincing the Night Away.
The longest ever running joke with The Shins is how they're going to
CHANGE YOUR LIFE and it's so, so boring to repeat at this stage (even
though I've referenced it myself, as if bound by law), but hearing
"Sleeping Lessons" and then later on the full album really did have an
impact, albeit a lesser one. Wincing the Night Away was among the
first American indie albums I remember getting really acquainted with
after spending most of the 2000s fixated on Britrock and my neighbouring
Nordic regions, and it was a breath of brand new air in its whimsy,
splendour and lushness. As much as it's a time capsule for me (a good
half the album's worth of songs bring back some really vivid
memories of certain places I happened to hear them in), the truth is
it's only gotten better with age, even if perhaps unfairly so as I now
get to compare it to other Shins albums. In 2021 as I write this, I own
all The Shins albums that have been released so far and that's solely
thanks to this album; and even if most of those records have been
diminishing returns or have only carried brief glimpses of what I fell in love with here, I
keep obediently following Mercer because at one point in his lifetime,
he made these ten songs (eleven, if you really want to count "Pam Berry"
that's technically a chopped off intro) and that's enough to make me a devotee.
From a chronological perspective Wincing the Night Away is everything the first two albums ever promised about The Shins, and everything it does is something that they'd be compared to forevermore - it well and truly establishes The Shins, gives them their final form. James Mercer and co are still firmly stood in their old indie pop grounds and the evolutionary line from Oh, Inverted World to here is crystal clear, but on the other hand Mercer's yearning for a more produced, layered sound is starting to gain real territory here. Hence, the instrumentation isn't limited to just twee keyboards and the occasional horn or violin flourish on top of the traditional band quartet set: the credits lists synthesizers, a bouzouki, a dulcimer, MIDI programming and a cat piano (!?), among other instruments. Most of these were also played by Mercer himself, as he's starting to show more explicitly that The Shins were his project through and through, something that he'd declare in all capital letters come next album. Here though, he hits the sweet spot between the two approaches. The songs are lush and vibrant, but they still have that intimate, homegrown feel that was so charming about the first two albums, as well as this one. And besides, every little extra element is there only in service of The Melody.
The Melody is the king here. Mercer is incredible and relentless in how he creates the most addictive, hook-heavy melodies both with his voice and instruments, and they all sound perfectly natural and effortless like they just blossomed into existence instead of being meticulously engineered to be weapons of mass affection. Shaking away the basement band aesthetics of the first two albums has only increased his power, because now those melodies are engaged with flourishing, rich arrangements, which act as highlighters and underliners for said melodies. "Phantom Limb" and "Turn on Me" are two of the best songs Mercer's written so far - and honestly probably ever will - and they're deeply layered in a stream of hooks and signature melodies one after another. "Phantom Limb" is even indulgent about it, closing off with a long wordless sing-along of vocal harmonies that's the perfect cherry on top of the song's irresistable run; "Turn on Me" meanwhile doesn't need such tricks to assert its dominance, as that bullseye chorus is more than enough (and the Y-O-U hook is somehow both obvious and ingenius at the same time). The sugar-bouncy "Australia" that constantly tries to one-up itself and the more calm and collected but none less lush "Girl Sailor", placed perfectly in the tracklist to break tension where it's needed, aren't too far behind either. These songs are such a celebration of songcrafts, smarts and arrangement magic, and they're pure joy.
The other added benefit of The Shins expanding their palette for Wincing the Night Away is that for the first time ever they've brought in some real variety, after how both of the first two albums (and particularly Chutes Too Narrow) were perhaps a little one-note. The variety on Wincing the Night Away doesn't mean just some changes in tempo and tone either, as Mercer takes the opportunity to take his posse into brand new waters. In most cases it means a heavier lean on keyboards as a shared lead instrument, like on soft and dreamy "Red Rabbits", but when Wincing the Night Away really lets go of its inhibitions it's a sight to behold. The surreal sway of "Sealegs", driven by its robotic drum machine and off-kilter speak-song vocals, is mind-blowingly different if you arrive here after the first two albums and almost unrecognisable as The Shins even when compared to everything else on this record, but it's a wobbly, woozy delight that subtly knits together the various threads of the album's new ideas under its more extreme guise. To a lesser extent the tightly-wound tension "Spilt Needles" is the same, first locked into a groove lead by a rhythm so sharp it jumps out immediately, before diving into a more familiar territory in its bridge, revealing a soft spot in its armor for a moment. Both "Spilt Needles" and "Sealegs" are still awash with those signature melodies, but they are practically alien in form and it's done exquisitely.
They're also shifts to a more serious territory. The Shins have spent 90% of their song catalogue so far walking on sunshine from a musical perspective even when Mercer's lyrics were often dripping in surprisingly brutal imagery, but the tone of the songs is coming closer to the lyrics on Wincing the Night Away, even if it's still dominantly a bright indie pop album. "Sealegs" and "Spilt Needles" make the first moves, but the album's sparsest songs lay down on this even heavier, with "Black Wave" matching its title sonically to a staggering decree with its hazy, textural murkiness and "A Comet Appears" closing the album with a scared sigh. "A Comet Appears" is, overall, one of the album's real high points: after so many songs full of wim and energy, its time-worn heart and Mercer's quietly desperate delivery are an emotional stab in the heart, and it's where he utilises that gift of melody like a blade. It's both beautiful and devastating. Where "Sleeping Lessons" revved up the album ready to go in a flash of excitement, "A Comet Appears" is its polar opposite and lays the record's weary head into a long rest with a hint of sadness that it's over. I primarily associate Wincing the Night Away with positive emotions, and that's partly why "A Comet Appears" is so impactful, as it tears the facade away before disappearing into the ether.
All of that - the variety in styles, the emotional complexity, the expanded sound arsenal - is exactly what the first two Shins records needed; and compared to the later records, the production hasn't yet become overbearing. But Wincing the Night Away isn't great because it's The Shins But More! but because it feels like Mercer finally gets to realise his own potential as a songwriter here, and the decision to embellish the sound is what made it possible. The purple prose and lavish praise for the songs above aren't because they just sound great, but because as songs they are such vividly written little masterpieces that hook into your life. "New Slang" on Oh, Inverted World made an impression to everyone who heard it because its central melody felt like it spoke to you (you, directly) from the very second you first heard it and it opened a pathway to your heart you never knew existed. Someone who's written something that great is unlikely to never do so again, but it took until this point for Mercer to repeat the trick and when he finally did, the floodgates opened and he wrote several songs equally as evocative and impressive; I worked my way down the discography backwards from here and it took me a fair long while to really get to grips with the first two albums because there was a stark absence of songs so clearly realised, apart from that one song everyone loved. But there's an abundance of such inspiration and warmth to the songs here that you find yourself swallowed into their dream-like worlds, and that's what makes Wincing the Night Away not just The Shins' best - and most consistent - record, but honestly one of my favourite indie pop records in general. The Shins are a band who probably aren't all that special in the grand scheme of things for me, but who I hold special nonetheless and it's solely because of this.
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