The Shins - 'Chutes Too Narrow' (Sub Pop)
4/5
By: Tim Dellow
The first day on holiday. All is well, as you gulp down your dose of vitamin C from the freshly squeezed orange juice that the quirky, knowingly-camp waiter serves you. You are in a small town, near Canada but still a part of the American dream. Perhaps it's called Kennebunkport.
Birds circle overhead, pop-culture vultures, picking at the carcass of complacent garage bands and Beach Boys copyists. It puts you off your breakfast, but the saccharine-sweet town beauty rubs your shoulder reassuringly. 'Don't worry about them,' she smiles with impossibly white teeth. 'Them birds are The Shins.'
You take a closer look at the prey as the heart of Guided by Voices is consumed by the goofy birds, greedily followed by the affable cheek of Darren Gough and the smile of Brian Wilson. Churned up in the stomach of the beasts and then forced through a chute too narrow, this guano tastes like manna from heaven.
Recorded in a basement, but sounding like a million dollars, the shot of summer that can thaw this seemingly eternal winter, and the first album by a band since Love to sound both soulful and pleasant. Stripping away the wallpaper with creative use of a hot-tongued witticisms and instrumental eclecticism, the dreadfully titled 'Pink Bullets' re-writes Chris Isaac's 'Wicked Game', defusing any bitter sentiments of infatuation and focussing on the essence of adoration, the line 'warm light on a winters day' an accurate summation of the worth of the wide-eyed exuberance of this album.
The Shins effortlessly prove that the post-modern scavenger doesn't need to be a cynical, patronising gravedigger, but can be a well-meaning bird, searching out sustenance in a stark desert of dreary repetition, and bringing its findings to your breakfast table. The vulture has had a bad name for too long.
Artists in this article: The Shins
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