Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/01/06
Label: Transgressive

Celebrity endorsement is a tricky business. While no one could claim that Rufus Wainwright really wishes Dame Elton had never given him the thumbs up, or that David Bowie's public enthusiasm was in any way awkward for TV On The Radio, an artist must be ever mindful of the heaper of such accolades. No one wants to wind up as the musical equivalent of an haute couture designer with Jade Goody in one of his frocks now, do they?

Albuquerque emigres The Shins have somehow escaped the damage of tainted love. After Natalie Portman famously pressed their "New Slang" onto Zach Braff's character in his 2004 directorial debut, "Garden State", the Portland residents were catapulted to a whole new level of popularity and sales of their exhilarating, loose-limbed, indie pop - especially of second LP "Chutes Too Narrow" - sky-rocketed. Now, with their third album, "the little band that could" prove that they comprehensively have.

"Wincing The Night Away" shows The Shins as fleet-footed and supremely confident, their slightly off-beat sensibility happily uncompromised by its (newly) gleaming production and overall panoramic bigness. Which is not to say its songs lack intimacy; James Mercer - whose voice is a dreamy lilt that effortlessly glides over his favoured irregular metric scans - is a dab hand at emotion's tiny details and snatches of his twisted poeticism - "so gimme your hand and let's jump out the window" ("Australia") - leap out when you least expect them.

Their pop command suggests The Shins have few peers, save perhaps for our own Guillemots (check out "Red Rabbits"). Rather, they recall the finest moments of Big Star, The Beach Boys, New Radicals and (especially) Crowded House, but "Wincing The Night Away" veers off into plenty of hitherto unexplored side roads. Against the undeniably ordinary, indie chug of "Turn On Me" and "Girl Sailor" are set the gorgeous, glitchy "Black Wave" (imagine Neil Finn's finest as rinsed by Four Tet), "Spilt Needles", where beautifully burnished pop codas are contrasted with fractured electronic loops and "Sea Legs", which matches slouchy hip hop beats and Beck-styled guitar with synthesised chamber-pop parts.

The Hope Diamond in The Shins' crown, however, is unarguably lead single "Phantom Limb". Deliciously nagging in its familiarity and near annoyingly irresistible, it distils The Byrds' chiming sweetness, the woozy warmth of The Beach Boys and Lemonheads' nonchalant cool without over-cooking the whole. It may prove to be the most perfect piece of indie pop written in our post-Pavement times. Until the next Shins album, perhaps.

    by Sharon O'Connell