For the majority of Americans, it's a given: summer is the best season of the year. Or so you'd think, judging from the anonymous TV ad men and women who proclaim, "Summer is here! Get your [insert iced drink here] now!"-- whereas in the winter, they regret to inform us that it's time to brace ourselves with a new Burlington coat. And TV is just an exaggerated reflection of ourselves; the hordes of convertibles making the weekend pilgrimage to the nearest beach are proof enough. Vitamin D overdoses abound.
If my tone isn't suggestive enough, then I'll say it flat out: I hate the summer. It is, in my opinion, the worst season of the year. Sure, it's great for holidays, work vacations, and ogling the underdressed opposite sex, but you pay for this in sweat, which comes by the quart, even if you obey summer's central directive: be lazy. Then there's the traffic, both pedestrian and automobile, and those unavoidable, unbearable Hollywood blockbusters and TV reruns (or second-rate series). Not to mention those package music tours.
But perhaps worst of all is the heightened aggression. Just last week, in the middle of the day, a reasonable-looking man in his mid-twenties decided to slam his palm across my forehead as he walked past me. Mere days later-- this time at night-- a similar-looking man (but different; there a lot of these guys in Boston) stumbled out of a bar and immediately grabbed my shirt and tore the pocket off, spattering his blood across my arms and chest in the process. There's a reason no one riots in the winter.
Maybe I need to move to the home of Sub Pop, where the sun is shy even in summer, and where angst and aggression are more likely to be internalized. Then again, if Sub Pop is releasing the Shins' kind-of debut (they've been around for nine years, previously as Flake, and then Flake Music), maybe even Seattle has turned to the bright side. For some have hailed Oh, Inverted World as the next great entry in a long line of clean and carefree pop albums that strings back to the Beach Boys' early surfing days. This is what's meant by "sunny" music: both laid-back and upbeat, with crystalline vocals and lyrics that, while sincere, aren't particularly weighty.
Thankfully, the Shins are a little more unpredictable than the summer, with its incessant, oppressive heat. "Caring is Creepy," the opener, recalls the slower numbers on Sunny Day Real Estate's last prog-heavy offering, The Rising Tide. James Mercer's voice is nearly as inhuman and unclear as Jeremy Enigk's, and his dramatic delivery shifts momentum almost as often. A less fortunate similarity is the echo-heavy vocals, which likewise provide ample pretension, but they're not enough to derail this good rock song.
The following track, "One by One All Day," is decidedly different. The more conventional vocals are instead layered and slightly withdrawn, allowing the thumping drums and jangly guitar to share the forefront. However, for all its pleasantness, it's fairly uniform. "Weird Days," the most obvious Beach Boys-inspired song here, slows the pace to a drift. Like the previous number, it's not particularly dynamic, but the vocals and tropical strumming are pretty enough.
The Shins start showing their real strengths with "Know Your Onion!" which sounds like a 60's British garage band striving for the Kinks and just falling short. Just. The hook is surprisingly deceptive, the occasional childish background vocals are fun without being irritable, and there's even a welcome hint of their previous sound, which comes in the form of a slow, Modest Mouse-like interlude that ends with a patented Guided by Voices guitar lick.
"Girl on the Wing" is another strong, but more straightforward pop song that rides along on ringing keyboard notes not unlike-- but less abrasive than-- GBV's "Titus and Strident Wet Nurse (Creating Jeffrey)" from this year's Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel compilation. But "Pressed in a Book" is undoubtedly the most straightforward, and perhaps the best song on Oh, Inverted World. The sound is like Weezer at their best-- simple, addictive chord changes and clear, sing-song vocals-- but for some background rattling and a few slow, strummy passages.
At times, though, the Shins seem too content to float along. The folky "New Slang" is Simon and Garfunkel all the way down to the celestial humming. "The Celibate Life," with its distant guitar and soft percussion, would be a carbon copy of the Magnetic Fields if it weren't for a lone harmonica. "Your Algebra" returns to S&G;, this time to their chantey side, adding only a spare, diligently picked acoustic guitar as accompaniment. But despite the obvious comparisons, these songs are too pretty to turn down.
Like summer itself, the Shins are slightly over-hyped. All the buzz that's surrounded this release had me thinking (read: hoping) it would be the pop album of, at the very least, this summer. Oh, Inverted World comes close, but too much of the material here recalls other bands to consider it a "great" album. Nonetheless, I still can't believe this is what most people think summer sounds like. I only wish this wretched season sounded so good.
