i told you about all those fears and away they did run
It’s been five whole years since The Shins released Wincing the Night Away. I will always remember the day that the album came out because it was the year that I graduated high school and my friends and I held a private listening party for ourselves (yeah, we were the cool kids). From the opening notes of “Sleeping Lessons,” I immediately knew it was going to be one of those albums that stuck with me for a very long time, and it certainly became the soundtrack to the spring that I graduated. Then, The Shins mysteriously fell off the face of the earth.
Yesterday, frontman and principle songwriter James Mercer finally unveiled the first single from The Shins’ new album Port of Morrow, entitled “Simple Song”. I suddenly found myself thinking back to the release of Wincing the Night Away, and realizing how much I, and the world around me, have changed since then. Needless to say, there’s a significant difference between being 17 and being 22. I got a message from one of my friends who was in attendance at our little listening party back in 2007 — she pointed out that she managed to enter and graduate university in the time that it took for a new Shins album to be written, recorded, and released. So what was James Mercer doing all this time?! He at least gave us a Broken Bells record to help fill the void, but there’s just something special about a Shins album that can’t possibly be compared.
Port of Morrow comes out March 20th on Mercer’s own label Aural Apothecary. It’s about effin’ time.
mp3: The Shins - Simple Song from Port of Morrow (2012)
mp3: The Shins - New Slang from Oh, Inverted World (2001)
mp3: The Shins - Gone For Good from Chutes too Narrow (2003)
mp3: The Shins - Sleeping Lessons (RAC Mix) (2007)
mp3: The Shins - We Will Become Silhouettes (The Postal Service Cover) from Such Great Heights EP (2003)
Remember what Natalie Portman said in Garden State? “You gotta hear this one song… it’ll change your life, I swear.”
