The Shins

Boris, “Party Boy”

This kind of sounds like a Death From Above 1979 track, a demonstration of the range that Boris have displayed over their long and incredible career.

The Shins, “Red Rabbits”

I’m not going to rehash my schtick with the Shins here (you can read it here), but I’ll instead note: I could have sworn I had a copy of Chutes Too Narrow (which is not this record), and I do not appear to have it in the library. Did I not rip it? Did I lose it? It’s the sort of question that kind of haunts me a little. How many records failed to make their way into my library or got lost during its peripatetic journey to its current home. Was I going to listen to it? Not the point!

Mule, “Lucky”

Every now and again, bands will fuse redneck aesthetics with various rock genres, to greater or lesser effect. In this case, Mule bolts that stuff onto noise rock, bolstered by the usual good engineering job by Steve Albini. I don’t think that it’s really inventive enough to make the three-piece lineup shine, and I’m not super attracted to the hillbilly stuff, so, uh, I guess this isn’t great.

Frank Black and the Catholics, “Bullet”

Frank Black went through a couple phases between v1 of the Pixies and v2 of the Pixies. After recording under just his own name, he apparently decided that his band rated a mention, and began recording as Frank Black and the Catholics. To my ears, this was the best phase of his post-Pixies career, and this record might be my favorite of the lot. There’s definitely plenty of the Frank Black madness here.

The Shins, “New Slang”

I sort of mentally lumped the Shins in with a bunch of other indie bands (like Death Cab) as being “fine, but not for me”. Who had the time to differentiate all these bands? It wasn’t actually until I found “For A Fool” on Rocksmith and had such a good time playing it that I paid more attention, and hey - turns out I actually really like the Shins. We wander into the music we like through a lot of different ways, and it always pays to keep your ears open.