I replied meekly: “What about The 10 Best Shins Songs…So Far?”Ī lot has certainly changed for The Shins in the five years since the band’s last release. When I was an intern at Paste, I even pitched a List of the Day ranking “The 10 Best Shins Songs.” Editor-in-Chief Josh Jackson kindly pointed out to me that the band’s entire repertoire at the time consisted of about 40 songs. I place them so high that sometimes I forget that their catalog is actually relatively small. Because of that, in my mind, The Shins are still one of the definitive indie bands. It wasn’t until Garden State that I even became aware that there was incredible music out there that wasn’t played on the radio and was being made at that very moment.

Instead, I carried around my portable CD player and a case of classic albums like Abbey Road or Tommy that I had learned about through my parents or my friends’ parents. Hell, I’m not even sure I had an iPod yet. When that film came out in 2004, I had yet to find a connection to contemporary music. (Damnit!) But honestly, if it hadn’t been for the Garden State soundtrack and Natalie Portman telling me The Shins would change my life, I wouldn’t have been exposed to indie music-or it would taken a little while longer, at least. I had only fairly recently become a fan of the band, and I was introduced to them the way most were-via a beautiful girl and a movie I promised myself I wouldn’t reference in this review. But I did know that The Shins had just released Wincing the Night Away, and that was all that mattered as I laid on my dorm-room bed, headphones on while the album washed over me. I didn’t even know then that I wanted make a career out of listening to music. However, when I wasn’t struggling to stay awake through whatever math class I was forced to take, I tended to listen to a lot of music (Surprise, surprise). It’s not necessarily an exorbitant amount of time, but a lot can change in five years.įive years ago, I was in the second semester of my freshman year of college where my daily activities typically consisted of going to class and sleeping-sometimes simultaneously. Five years: That’s how long it’s been since The Shins released their last record.

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