Wincing the Night Away

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Customer Reviews:

The Shins - Wincing The Night Away 8/10 [Posted on 2008-07-24]
It's been a good run for the Shins so far, a band that languished in typical indie-pop obscurity for seven years before exploding into popularity with their second album, Chutes Too Narrow (over 393,000 copies sold) and a Grammy nomination (for "Best Recording Package," true, but they take what they can get). Indeed, things were going good for New Mexico's prodigal sons.

Rather than give us another copy of Chutes Too Narrow, the album that, along with everyone's favorite indie-romantic torch film Garden State, propelled the band into the limelight, the Shins present us with an album that at times retains the familiar sound listeners have come to associate with the band and at others stretches their sonic imaginations. Wincing the Night Away attempts to strike a fine balance between experimentation and `60s pop homage, but only halfway fails.

Lead song "Sleeping Lessons," a look at Mercer's chronic insomnia, starts off as most Shins do, quietly and building up a sense of tension. However, where Chutes Too Narrow's "Kissing the Lipless" burst into a sugary electric burst within seconds, the synthesizer and gentle acoustic guitar strums on "Sleeping Lessons" go on for about two and a half minutes until exploding into a typical Shins song, all bouncing drums and Mercer's near falsetto illuminating the way.

Listeners are once again reminded of the Shins' new music ideas with "Sea Legs," not only the longest track of the album at five and a half minutes but also one that radically reinvents what can be called a Shins song. The song is built around a funky bass riff and a drum machine (!), along with strings and synthesizer effects.

While the song is at first relatively catchy and a novel sound for the band, it soon become repetitive and the typically obtuse lyrics turn grating, with Mercer singing non sequiturs like "when the dead moon rises again / we've no time to start a protocol." The song ends anti-climatically with a boring synthesized trip-hop jam.

Wincing the Night Away is also fairly top-heavy. The second half tends to blur together, with songs that sound either too stereotypical Shins ("Girl Sailor") and leave no lasting mark, or are too self-consciously experimental. The most obvious is "Split Needles," which suffers from an annoying synthesizer line and drums mixed way too loudly.

That being said, there are some fine efforts at creating a new sound on Wincing the Night Away, as well as some entertaining examples of the patented Shins "sound" that make for some of their best songs.

"Red Rabbit" is the band's most successful foray into the experimental side of pop music, holding Mercer's strong vocals on a foundation of kitchen-sink sounds that sound like they were taken from an old-school Super Mario soundtrack. A melody from what sounds like an underwater piano accents Mercer's unusually dark lyrics, later accompanied by simple acoustic chords and mimicked applause.

The album's first single, "Phantom Limb," is pop bliss, catchy and refreshing. A simple drum-and-tambourine beat anchor the song, built mostly around Mercer's enchanting vocals and a series of guitar licks, until the song climaxes at the chorus into a harmonized choir of voices.

The best song on the album might also be the best one the Shins have ever recorded. "Australia" begins with a series of "la-la-la's," chiming guitar, and a cheery drumbeat before Mercer's multi-tracked vocals erupt into what may be the quintessential Shins pop tune.

The song is a fusion of all of the Shins' most obvious influences and the band meld these influences into its own creation seamlessly. Much of the credit goes to Mercer, whose singing here is some of the strongest on the album. The lyrics are at first depressing but morph into optimism, with Mercer singing "so give me your hand / and let's jump out of the window" at the song's ending.

All things considered, Wincing the Night Away is a bold step for a band many had come to think of as a one-trick pony. While a few of the songs are musically uninspiring and lacking a sense of direction, many show a heartening change of course that hopefully will be carried over to the next album. Songs like "Phantom Limb" and "Australia," meanwhile, prove that the Shins can still rock like it is 1968 and sound cool while doing it.

One of the best CD's of 2007 [Posted on 2008-08-01]
I picked up this CD at my local Indie music shop in Vancouver without knowing anything about The Shins.
This CD is original in it's sound, fun and really entertaining.
The sound is that of British Pop (though the band is from Oregon).
Best tracks are: "Australia", "Phantom Limb", "Red Rabbits" and "Turn on Me".
I rate this as one of the best CD's of 2007. Very enjoyable!

The Shins will change your life [Posted on 2008-08-11]
Or at least that's what Natalie Portman told me in the film "Garden State". I respected that film enough to trust that line of dialogue and give this Shins CD a try. Natlie (actually Zac Braff, who wrote the script) was right -- I am forever altered into a Shins fan.

On first listen, I liked the first few songs, and thought the rest were OK. With each successive listen, I quickly grew to love this CD, practically to the point of addiction. "Sleeping Lessons" was my early favorite, with "Red Rabbits" now elipsing that in the never-ending stream of Shins songs in my head.

Fantastic CD. Easily within my top 20 favorites of all time.

Good, but clearly not their best [Posted on 2008-08-16]
I loved their first two records and I've gone to one of their shows (they were awesome), so I made sure to give this record a long time to warm up on me. Of course, I loved the single, I had very high hopes for this record. I didn't like it so much when I first listened through the record, but I thought that I would grow to love it over time. I've listened through it several times since then, and I still can't see why this would be considered a better record than Oh, Inverted World or Chutes Too Narrow. When compared to a lot of other bands out there, Wincing... is far better than anything most current bands have ever done. Of course, they have to let their music evolve over time, I wasn't expecting Wincing... to sound exactly like their previous work. Every time I listened to it (with an open mind), I was left unsatisfied. I sinceirly feel that there was something special about their first two records that Wincing The Night Away lacks. I believe that anyone who is interested in or is a fan of The Shins should buy Oh, Inverted World or Chutes Too Narrow first. It's quite good, but clearly not their best.

I LOVE THIS CD [Posted on 2008-11-23]
My favorite song is "Red Rabbits".I first listened to The Shins one or two years ago.If The Shins released another album,I would buy it in a heartbeat.

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