| By the time you read this, James Mercer’s hardwood floors will be re-finished. A relative newlywed, homeowner and full-time musician as the singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer with The Shins, his current situation is a changed one from the self-imposed debt he was in just six years ago.
"My whole life has changed since we got signed with Sub Pop," he says. "My life has been a rolling dice just landing."
After saving a little money from working in factories in Albuquerque, and deciding to put his two credit cards to good use, Mercer quit his job to concentrate on what would become the 2001 Sub Pop release Oh, Inverted World, 31 fantastic minutes that re-elected pop music as something to care about.
"It’s been since then that I’ve been working full time on music – so that would have been in 2000. Then I did go into debt, but through licensing things that we got from the songs when we got signed, I was able to get out of debt. It was kind of a gamble, but it paid off."
Despite his analogies, Mercer insists he is not much of a gambler.
"Sometimes the band will go through Las Vegas and we’ll go into the casinos, I’m probably the first to get totally bored sitting there playing those games. I wish I enjoyed it more – it gets really goddamn boring when you lose."
Fans won’t feel that sting of defeat when listening to The Shins’s latest release Wincing the Night Away, available on Sub Pop later this month. The sweetness is there throughout, but is accompanied by a dark romance that will keep you on your toes. Elements of chamber music, orchestral arrangements and chugalug R&B melt together courtesy of the vibraphone, banjo, guitar and Mercer’s recognizable falsetto. In what he describes as a fabric of songs, this album of 11 cohesive tracks is catchy, thoughtful and evolves with every listen – all that a pop record should be, from a band whose fans have big expectations. No matter, Mercer has a lot of fun and you can hear it.
"If there was pressure, it was to keep working at it. Keep going. Don’t slack off. That’s not too difficult. It’s like painting or any other art form – it should be an enjoyable experience."
Not that events leading up to the work on Wincing weren’t enjoyable, but Mercer admits that recording Chutes Too Narrow, 2003’s followup to Oh, Inverted World, was a little rushed as far as the details were concerned and he wanted to regain control over his schedule.
"There was a conscious battle to make sure I never said yes to any deadline," says Mercer. "You’d be surprised – people will set deadlines for you. So you’ve got to be really careful about what you say."
"I just wanted to be able to experiment and I like to have the freedom to totally start over – and I mean, I do it all the time. It’s nothing new. We’ll have a song and it will be totally done – it’s recorded and I’ll be like ‘You know what? We should do it halftime and we should totally change the drum part.’ Then you have to start over from scratch, but it’s always better. If you’ve actually gone that far to say that, then generally that is what you need to do."
Mercer may not be an island, but he initiated this process and spent a great deal of time writing and recording alone in his bedroom. Over the course of two years, he mapped out pretty much what he wanted Wincing to be, and had recorded bass lines, drum machine drum tracks and some vocals even before speaking with the rest of the band about it.
"I had this feeling that somehow people think the songs always existed and it’s difficult for them to imagine that there was this moment – when we were done touring for Chutes Too Narrow and for the goddamn Garden State soundtrack – where I sat down and was to write a record and I had nothing but a blank fucking notebook. The guys never saw that. And that is a scary moment – it can be. Be fucking clever, right now. Go."
Without having had too much time to reflect on his current state, Mercer recognizes that making his living at something he loves is a strange and rare gift.
"What’s funny is that there are so many people out there who are more talented than me, who are struggling and not making money doing what they’re doing," he says. "That’s probably the weirdest feeling I get from it, and the biggest feeling."
"The most significant thing is that I’m put in this position – that you kind of feel you don’t really deserve. Therefore the whole thing just feels like it’s hanging by a thread. Try and enjoy it without feeling too guilty." |
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