Nothing Like We’d Ever Dreamt: The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow at 20

Looking back on the indie rock greats’ career-defining second album

October 23, 2023October 23, 2023 Ted Miller 0 Comments 2003, 20th Anniversary, Chutes Too Narrow, Fountains of Wayne, James Mercer, Marty Crandall, Sub Pop Records, The Flamin' Groovies, The Kinks, The Magnetic Fields, The Shins

A Shins tribute is like the 30 Rock fireworks bit — A Salute to Formalism!

Sure, there’s a whole exegesis to be had about James Mercer’s gentle, even covert misanthropy, from the antisocialist(!) “So Says I” to the fiancee left behind in “Gone for Good.” But it’s covert for a reason. Could be how he thinks, might be his jaundiced worldview, but it’s not what he’s selling, or else it would be upfront. What is actually upfront in “So Says I”: “Hooo-oooo-ooo-ooo!” He’d be a “songwriter’s songwriter” like Freedy Johnston, admired behind the scenes by more visible peers, if he didn’t strike fluke-fame gold via Garden State (and, sure, a McDonalds commercial) — and if all his albums were as good as Chutes Too Narrow.

The Shins Chutes Too Narrow, Sub Pop Records 2003

Turns out they’re not. The perfectionism Spoon fans crow about seemed inevitable after the paisley-fringed Oh, Inverted World and its sharper sequel (and I’d count the earlier When You Land Here, It’s Time to Return, credited to Flake Music, a band made from four out of four Shins, containing the song “The Shins”). But even though their albums since then are all competent to pretty good, I only count four moments of perfectionism. Chart peak (and gigantic beneficiary of the AC/DC rule) Wincing the Night Away had the swinging Smiths homage “Australia,” the twilit “Girl Sailor” and chords-inside-of-chords construction of single “Phantom Limb.” And new-band reboot Port of Morrow rocked the mighty “Simple Song” and its awesome, Wes Anderson-inspired, Succession-predicting video. The rest? Competent to pretty good.

This failure makes Chutes Too Narrow sound better than ever, not least because it reveals Mercer to be painfully human (finally those lyrics match!) but its ten gleaming tunes hard-won and polished from stone rather than automatically shitting out of him. Oh, Inverted World gets a mite sleepy in the back half, undermining the power pop likes of “Know Your Onion!” and “Girl Inform Me” with the needless “Your Algebra” and the lengthy “Past and the Pending.” But Chutes is psych-free, close-miked, in your face from the opening strums of “Kissing the Lipless” and Mercer’s sudden, Jeremy Enigk-derived yelp when the drums hit. That song actually rocks, as do “So Says I” and the underrated psychobilly workout “Fighting in a Sack” (applaud his wordy ass massaging “Walking a bridge on weakening cables / Huddled up in fear and hate / Because we know our fate / And it’s a lot to put us through” into a chorus without force).

So were the Shins supposed to be rock stars? Bookish retro-popsters? Library-dwelling sweater bros mumbling their way to The OC fame? Even pedal-steel-wielding countrymen on best-in-show ballad “Gone for Good?” Like power pop forebears Fountains of Wayne or the Flamin’ Groovies or even the impossible riddlers in the Magnetic Fields, I’d say the genre they were selling was “craft,” their sense of history and clever appropriation of its palette within the strictures of the all-powerful pop song. Verses, hooks, post-choruses, unexpected middle eights like the chamber-pop break that blossoms from the center of the already lovely “Saint Simon.”

VIDEO: The Shins “Saint Simon”

The illusion that Mercer could effortlessly juggle and stack these unbreakable rules into seamless new shapes was a testament to how tight and on-a-roll his songwriting was in 2003. Of course, there were glimmers of that to begin with; the perfect “New Slang” making its mark because its ghostly, wordless hook sounded so timeless. Marty Crandall’s keyboard swirls and staccato organ lifted “The Celibate Life” and “Girl on the Wing” immediately after by utilizing electronics for a stolid anti-futurism.

Chutes foregrounded not just guitars but crispness and clarity; where 2001’s “Weird Divide” intentionally drifted in a faroff reverb sea to give it a whiff of doo wop, the sparsest tunes on the follow-up (“Young Pilgrims,” “Those to Come”) were produced like they were sitting next to you, paced so naturally that Mercer could’ve been improvising. You could hear his vision leaping from lo-fi to full-blown proto-Illinois and –Funeral widescreen as he sold more and more records.

Oh, Inverted World bespoke a songsmith’s confidence couched behind a texturalist’s dreams. Whereas on “Turn a Square,” the guy just decided, now we’re The Kinks. And hand it to him, because for a few golden years in the 2000s, they were. They peaked with Chutes Too Narrow.