Road Test: This Song Will Change Your Life
When frontmen go on solo tours as rumors of new albums swirl, there is a good chance they’ll road-test some possible material on you. These performances used to be intimate moments: an artist sharing something that was, at that point in time, reserved only for those lucky enough to be in the audience. But now that anyone can whip out their phone, press record, and have it uploaded to YouTube by the time the next song begins, these moments have become a little less confidential. And now we’re in on it, too.
Many of us had given up hope on The Shins. Sure, they’ve been known to take their time getting around to releasing new records. Sure, Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats dispelled some of our worries by confirming that The Shins were still a band and explaining that everyone was just a little too busy to focus on the follow-up to 2007′s Wincing the Night Away when we spoke to him last year. But this reassurance came even as James Mercer joined forces with producer Danger Mouse and began charting new musical territory as Broken Bells. Last year’s self-titled album was recently followed by the Meyrin Fields EP, and the collaboration began to feel a bit more like a band than a side project. And so we accepted that maybe this time The Shins were gone for good.
But we breathed a tentative sigh of relief as a video surfaced from James Mercer’s benefit concert at The Bagdad Theater in Portland, OR earlier this year. Not only did Mercer unveil a moody new number, but he prefaced the performance by explaining that a new record is in the works and this song should appear on it.
As much as we loved it, we aren’t holding our breath just yet. A few new songs were debuted on the road back in 2009, and James Mercer brought us up to speed on tours, line-up changes and a laundry list of projects he was working on around the same time in an interview with Pitchfork. In the interview, he voiced the expectation that The Shins would begin recording after the spring tour dates that year. So understandably, we aren’t sold until we have an album in our hands, but in the meantime at least we have a little more hope.
– Catherine DeGennaro
