Keep Your Caring Creepy

Pitchfork reports that my beloved Shins are in the process of making their third album.

All right, Shins.  I'm going to go ahead and be optimistic about this project's prospects.  Cautiously optimistic.  Step gingerly, darling Shins, because the potential for quagmire abounds.  Consider: you are big time rock stars.  (Ok, let's be honest: medium-time rock stars.)  You've headlined in a movie starring Natalie Portman.  You've contributed a song to the SpongeBob SquarePants movie soundtrack.  And, perhaps most importantly, your singer/songwriter/raison d'etre James Mercer is engaged and planning a springtime wedding.

Please, Shins, don't get happy.  Your second album?  Chutes Too Narrow?  Yes. Yes, I loved it.  Of course I did.  But it carried a terrifying aura of...peppiness.  I have been burned before, Shins, and I don't want to prance down that primrose path with you.  Not only was that prancing painful, and not only did it carry the potential for ankle spains and public ridicule, but it led each time to a sort of retroactive diminishing of the offending band's previous albums.

It's not as though I expect you to be miserable all the time.  But nothing makes an indie record come together better than an undertone of existential Nameless Dread.  The rawness, the roughness, the exposed nerves and the naked emotion of Oh, Inverted World were the elements which made it such a hauntingly beautiful and unforgettable album.  "Oh, Inverted World" was weird and quirky and not even a little bit trendy.  You seemed to diverge from what made that album such a prodigious accomplishment on the more polished, studio-ed, and chipper "Chutes Too Narrow." 

Just be careful, Shins, that's all I'm saying.  Because if I sense you cheering up to the point where you're going to be be-bopping around the room, blissfully crooning about the love and joy exhibited by an allegedly lovable and endearing ogre whose name curiously rhymes with "dreck," I will be watching.  I will move to your city.  I will slash your tires on a daily basis.  I will tell telemarketers the world over that you are interested in hearing detailed descriptions of their products and services during the dinner hour.  I will sew shrimp into the hems of your curtains and stuff your magazines full of those annoying subscription cards. I will put sugar in your salt shakers and baking soda in your flour canisters. 

In short, I will do anything I can to make your lives so desolate and tormented that you'll have no choice but to sing about it.   

Comments

[Steve]

you'll do for them like what you do for me? i'd watch out shins b/c she's capable of coming through with every threat and the desired result. it's just too bad i can't sing about it.