The Shins - Oh Inverted World (2001) and Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
Yeah, I'll admit it, I got into The Shins because of Garden State. I realize they were already buzzing in all the buzzworthy parts of the country, but I lived in suburban Arizona and information doesn't travel that fast to the desert (much like water). And honestly, despite the cliche that they've become in describing "coming-of-age" indie film soundtracks, the music just plain WORKED in that context and clearly made an impression on most 20-somethings who stumbled across it.
However, despite immediately picking up the Garden State soundtrack, it didn't really connect for me right away. I was fully content with hearing Caring is Creepy and New Slang amoungst the other lo-fi tunes, not taking that next step to album purchase for one reason or another, just starting school, obsessively listening to Jimmy Eat World's new record instead, etc. . I probably didn't have any reason at all, I was just dumb.
A few weeks after Christmas of 2004 I was playing with my new iPod (which I had purchased for myself), the most high-tech of gadgets I had gotten thus far. Less than a year before that, I was still carrying around a walkman and mixtapes, so this was quite the endeavor. I went over to my best friend Jayme's house at some point while she was home from school in Oregon. We ended up doing a big record exchange and having spent a semester nearby to Portland and all that was "happening" in music, she had picked up some great stuff. She ended up having a compilation of Shins songs, Oh Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow jumbled up on one CD. I ripped it onto my computer and it sat in my consciousness for a while.
This also started my habit of listening to records on shuffle, something I had only manually done on mixtapes. I had no concept of what song belonged to what record and ended up experiencing all of them as an entire body of work rather than individual albums. I sometimes find myself grappling with that idea and which, as a music fan, should be preferred. I look at a record like Jimmy Eat World's Clarity and I get nervous thinking of it out of sequence. I have a feeling that Mercer and crew probably meant for the records to be experience as albums, but hey, they probably meant for me to discover them outside of the most hipster cliche movie and I failed at that, too.
No matter how it is experienced, The Shins created two records that are so sonically haunting and unlike anything I had really ever heard before. Mercer's vocals are now some of the most familiar while screening my iPod and often times I find a sense of comfort in revisiting some of the songs. The ironic part of this music not reaching Arizona (or at least, me) is that they came from our neighboring state of New Mexico, which is such a mindnumbingly boring state, I have no idea how something so beautiful can come from a state that is so often a pitstop for most bands. But maybe that's just it. Maybe music doesn't have to come from somewhere as bustling as New York, or the community I found in Arizona. It exists in the quiet of a state like New Mexico and in whatever sequence it feels like.
. . . But seriously, from ALBUQUERQUE???
Surprisingly the first time posting a La Blogotheque sesh. These videos are brilliant.
However, despite immediately picking up the Garden State soundtrack, it didn't really connect for me right away. I was fully content with hearing Caring is Creepy and New Slang amoungst the other lo-fi tunes, not taking that next step to album purchase for one reason or another, just starting school, obsessively listening to Jimmy Eat World's new record instead, etc. . I probably didn't have any reason at all, I was just dumb.
A few weeks after Christmas of 2004 I was playing with my new iPod (which I had purchased for myself), the most high-tech of gadgets I had gotten thus far. Less than a year before that, I was still carrying around a walkman and mixtapes, so this was quite the endeavor. I went over to my best friend Jayme's house at some point while she was home from school in Oregon. We ended up doing a big record exchange and having spent a semester nearby to Portland and all that was "happening" in music, she had picked up some great stuff. She ended up having a compilation of Shins songs, Oh Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow jumbled up on one CD. I ripped it onto my computer and it sat in my consciousness for a while.
This also started my habit of listening to records on shuffle, something I had only manually done on mixtapes. I had no concept of what song belonged to what record and ended up experiencing all of them as an entire body of work rather than individual albums. I sometimes find myself grappling with that idea and which, as a music fan, should be preferred. I look at a record like Jimmy Eat World's Clarity and I get nervous thinking of it out of sequence. I have a feeling that Mercer and crew probably meant for the records to be experience as albums, but hey, they probably meant for me to discover them outside of the most hipster cliche movie and I failed at that, too.
No matter how it is experienced, The Shins created two records that are so sonically haunting and unlike anything I had really ever heard before. Mercer's vocals are now some of the most familiar while screening my iPod and often times I find a sense of comfort in revisiting some of the songs. The ironic part of this music not reaching Arizona (or at least, me) is that they came from our neighboring state of New Mexico, which is such a mindnumbingly boring state, I have no idea how something so beautiful can come from a state that is so often a pitstop for most bands. But maybe that's just it. Maybe music doesn't have to come from somewhere as bustling as New York, or the community I found in Arizona. It exists in the quiet of a state like New Mexico and in whatever sequence it feels like.
. . . But seriously, from ALBUQUERQUE???
Surprisingly the first time posting a La Blogotheque sesh. These videos are brilliant.
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