The Shins. #2 On the Billboard charts this week. The Shins. Castrati-vocals, jangly guitars and all, this preening pop band has managed to defy logic and sell over 100,000 copies of its new albums in its first week of release. One-hundred thousand! It just goes to show that for all the hip posturing “indie” kids partake in, they’re complete pussies. They can pontificate about the ills of mainstream “Emo” acts without relent, yet vulnerable, fragile fops like Bright Eyes, and The Shins are somehow cool. What about songwriting void of ego? Is that not worthy of being lauded? What about bold rock, and experimentation? I’m not saying I think Melt Banana should be selling one-hundred thousand albums a week or anything, but, The Shins? I just don’t get it! They’re like the rabbit of independent music. A totally pedestrian, useless animal that is “cute” enough people don’t immediately put it in a burlap sack and throw it in a river.
The responsible party, of course, is my favorite “mildly depressed” purveyor of twentysomething ennui, Zach Braff. That stupid, plotless movie of his said The Shins would change our lives. “Dum-da-da-dum-da-da-da-dum-dum,” it begins, and then the castrati voice starts singing some hokey bullshit that makes absolutely no sense, and everyone goes, “aww” because it’s a wuv song that mentions kisses. First of all, the last place I’d ever go for advice about music is a major motion picture, especially one written by the guy from “Scrubs.” Second of all, I didn’t champion underground rock music for years just to let this sappy shit win the day.
The city of Albuquerque is filled with vibrant culture and ethnic flavor. How fucking sheltered were these dopes growing up that they couldn’t infuse some of the intrinsic character of their hometown in their sound? Instead they had to wimp out and sing grating songs about girls, and flowers, and small woodland critters (probably). The Velvet Underground captured dirty New York. Killdozer spun ugly, overblown country tunes tied to life in Wisconsin. Beulah perfected sun-kissed California. Better bands from more obtuse locales than Albuquerque have tried and succeeded. The Shins looked at their immediate environment, saw the beautiful adobe houses billowing from the bases of surrounding mountains, and the remnants of a Spanish settlement, and decided they wanted to sound like a less talented version of the Beach Boys.
There is nothing redeeming about this music whatsoever. It’s about as likely to change your life as waking up and realizing you left your contact lenses in overnight.
February 1st, 2007
thats nice and all, but where’s my damn care package? huh?
February 2nd, 2007
they’re going out in a few hours
February 3rd, 2007
I think I have to disagree a bit on this one. Albuquerque might be filled with vibrant culture, but so was Holbrook, to be honest. You grow up having a certain appreciation for that culture, but it turns out that appreciation is really on a superficial level while you’re there. You take a lot of things for granted (in a lot of cases this is simply because you aren’t old/wise/jaded enough to know what the hell is going on anyway). Mostly you feel like a white, elitist piece of shit, and no one really wants to hear about it. They want to hear about the kitschy Route 66 teepees and the awesome tortillas, which you know nothing about from anything other than an observational point of view, but they only want to hear of those things alone–not how they affect you, or relate to you in any way. You can’t really blame them, either. That’s about as middle-class wah-wah white kid emo as you can get. There’s really no way to remedy it other than completely rejecting all of that, and then coming up with something that makes absolutely no sense, in which case it could be considered ‘arty’ or ‘poetic or, at the very least, ‘drug-induced’. (Not that these are worthy of any positive esteem in general; there’s always that factor of “not sucking”.)
That one song from that one movie–I like the song, although I don’t really thing of it as a love song. Actually I picture Amish people spinning around in circles in a field which is more green than it probably should be. Don’t ask.
February 3rd, 2007
extremely well thought out, g-dawg. thank you for the perspective. i miss you and hope all is well.