Sleepless With the Shins

So, following an afternoon with the man behind the curtain, I meet up with the rest of the band at Le Pigeon, a trendy new restaurant on Burnside Street, and settle in for a feast at the chef’s table. Everyone is in good spirits and bottles of red wine start flowing. During dinner, the contrast between the heavy-hearted artist and the freewheeling band of rock ’n’ rollers becomes obvious. Earlier, when I’d asked Mercer to describe his bandmates, he spoke of how Sandoval has a very close relationship with his mom, how Hernandez grew up in a rough part of town, and how Crandall’s aversion to abstract thought might have something to do with his father passing away at an early age. But at dinner, when I ask the band the same question, Hernandez matches his mates to members of the old television show The A-Team while Crandall compares them to various Transformers (a table debate breaks out as to whether Optimus Prime ever physically dominated Megatron; the corresponding Shins being Sandoval and Mercer, respectively.)

If Mercer pilots The Shins, then Crandall is head flight attendant. He’s the guy who talks to the audience during shows, the public face you’re most likely to meet at a party. Backstage, too, he’s what Mercer calls the “social leader” of the band, the one who mixes and mingles, who grips and grins. He’s in charge of writing the setlists and, after seeing the band live, it’s easy to get the impression that Crandall is the mastermind. This isn’t the case, of course, but for Mercer—who winces the night away and couldn’t really enjoy the band’s first tour because of his social anxiety—Crandall is the yang to his yin. Whereas Mercer used to hyperventilate before shows and get so freaked out his hands would go numb, Crandall is a natural stage ham. He’s loose, talkative and he keeps things moving.

“I know it’s kind of a nervous habit,” says Crandall, “but I can’t shut up between songs. I just hate awkward silences.” Throughout dinner, he interjects with witty one-liners and turns to me during lulls and ask things like, “So, are you getting everything you need?”

After we eat, we head to a nearby pool hall. Watching these guys interact is like watching a multi-headed organism at work. “We’re a team,” observes Crandall. “We’re a gang. We’ve got each other’s backs.”

As Mercer observes, Portland is really about the details and open spaces. There’s plenty of both on Wincing the Night Away. With background noise like conversational chatter and subtle bird-chirping weaving its way in and out, the entire disc has a phantom vibe to it. The word the band keeps returning to is, “ghosty.”

Shins albums have always had a celestial quality, recalling apparitions and spirits. Another word Mercer often uses is “creepy.” If Wincing the Night Away is a reference to sleeplessness, the music itself recalls the dream world. It’s filled with subconscious melodies and lucid imagery. Digital effects and studio wizardry have helped The Shins’ recorded output sound almost like it comes from another dimension. It’s not the type of music that can be perfectly recreated live; Shins concerts are much more rough-around-the-edges than the band’s immaculate records.

Before recording Shins debut Oh, Inverted World in his studio apartment in Albuquerque, one of Mercer’s friends downloaded some bootleg recording software. This allowed Mercer to do in his bedroom what only bands with major-label funding could previously do. Mercer remembers thinking, “We can continue to be this indie band and I can go back and f— with shit and make it sound like a real record.” This was in the late ’90s when home recording was undergoing a revolution of sorts, thanks to attainable computer programs like Cool Edit Pro and Pro Tools.

With his 30s looming, Mercer approached his parents and squared up. He was going to give The Shins one big push and if it didn’t pan out, he told them, he’d change his entire career. In the meantime, he was going to quit his job making lights in a ceramics factory and work full-time on what would become Oh, Inverted World. He played a few tracks for his dad. “I kind of phrased it like this: ‘I’ve got this computer and I’m able to record the way no one in this whole f—ing state is recording. I’m using this new technology that can allow me to actually control the whole recording process. And I’m going to do it. I’m going to record some good shit, and if I don’t get some response from it, if it’s just like Flake, I’ll go back to school, I’ll get a degree and I’ll quit the whole f—ing thing.”

Shortly after that conversation, The Shins toured with Modest Mouse and found that their music was being heavily traded on the original Napster. Far from being upset at the illegal file-sharing, The Shins were ultimately helped by the Napster buzz, soon signing with Sub Pop, the Seattle indie that most famously launched Nirvana’s career.

But the real sea change, everyone agrees, came in the form of a little-movie-that-could called Garden State, written and directed by Scrubs star Zach Braff. During the movie, Natalie Portman tells Braff she’s listening to The Shins. She passes him the headphones and says, “You gotta hear this one song. It’ll change your life, I swear.” For the next 25 seconds, you hear “New Slang” while Braff listens intently. As many people as that moment affected, no one felt its gravity more than The Shins themselves.

“It had a huge impact on my life,” admits Mercer. “We more than doubled our fan base.” But once he signed off on the licensing rights, he had little control over the creative outcome, which was a situation that made him squeamish and uncomfortable. It’s something he struggled with and, three years later, he still wonders about it. “You couldn’t ask for better advertising, you know? But is it too much? I certainly worried that it was putting us into a situation where we might be overexposed or seen as being in cahoots with some sort of Hollywood thing, but I don’t exactly think it’s been taken that way.”

It was the moment that made The Shins famous. The two songs used for the film (“New Slang” and “Caring Is Creepy”) came from the first album, Oh, Inverted World. When the film was released, the band had already finished touring for the second one, Chutes Too Narrow. But with a brand-new fanbase that was snatching up their catalog, The Shins had to tour again and, as Mercer puts it, “meet the new audience” before work could begin on Wincing the Night Away. It was a two-year process and the band, admittedly, took its time.

Perhaps the pace was a reaction to the hurried schedule for Chutes Too Narrow. Recording that album was a nightmare for Mercer. “It happened in a fury,” he explains. “I was losing my mind. Talk about not sleeping—I would sleep two hours a day, and then I’d be in a waking trance. I was so stressed out; I was having weird visions instead of dreams. We got it done, and then, really, I didn’t want to hear that f—in’ record ever again. It was such a painful process.”

It’s a good indication then that Mercer still enjoys listening to Wincing the Night Away and has been eager to play it for friends. The rest of the band members are excited about the disc, too. They’re proud it doesn’t repeat what they’ve already done and that it’s their most actively experimental album yet. The “ghosty” factor has been turned up to 11.

“I really like the idea of kids just being able to embrace this album as opposed to it being a chart-topper or something,” says Hernandez. “I like the idea of some teenager in New Hampshire or Ohio having this disc as something that can really comfort them. I like that. That’s neat.”

Portland is a city known for its caffeine addictions. It’s curious how we Americans have become such slaves to the gap between our desires and our actualities—we drink coffee to stay awake, and yet as many as three out of every four adults in America have experienced various symptoms of sleeping disorders, and nearly one in five has taken something to help them fall asleep. Many of the same teenagers Hernandez hopes will take refuge in Wincing the Night Away will grow up to be insomniacs, while others will develop social-anxiety disorders. But at least they’re not alone. Mercer sings their pain the way Morrissey once sang his.

After shots of tequila and a few games of pool, Crandall drops me off down the street from my hotel, leaving me to trudge the rest of the way on foot as his Scion disappears round the bend. It’s already past last call and I’m looking forward to sinking into my bed. For the first time in days, I’ll be able to sleep the night away.