The Shins

The pressure was on for the Shins' third LP, causing songwriter James Mercer to retreat to the Moog-lit glow of his basement. The skittish nights alluded to in the title bear out in the opening, "Sleeping Lessons," which cautiously emerges from a fog of synthesizers one careful instrument at a time. The album doesn't match the total package of Chutes Too Narrow, but when they eschew the 808 and '80s synths for a simple back beat--as on "Australia," "Turn On Me" and the single "Phantom Limb"--the Shins still prove to be more satisfying than their literary pop peers.

The Shins' 2001 Oh, Inverted World was a siren song from a familiar type: "pimpled and
angry" outsider saved by music, but still cut off from the love he seeks by unkind women
and cruel fate. In 2003, Chutes Too Narrow topped two pained kiss-off songs with four
fatalistic philosophical ones, then shifted into a nostalgic tribute to a girlfriend from the
pimpled years, two self-critical relationship songs, and an enigmatic acoustic fin... More >