The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Just like old times for The Shins
Founder James Mercer is enthused to return to touring and revisit debut album
The Shins had intended to celebrate “Oh, Inverted World,” the band’s acclaimed debut, with a 20th-anniversary tour in 2021, founder James Mercer says. Then the pandemic turned the actual world upside down.
“So, we kind of adapted,” says Mercer, the Shins’ singer, songwriter and sole permanent member. “Now it’s a coming-of-age tour.”
Oh, Inverted World — the 21st Birthday Tour plays the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday with a full performance of the album that took Mercer’s music out of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, studio apartment where he recorded it and introduced the Shins to the world.
Songs such as “New Slang” and “Caring Is Creepy” became beloved staples of the Shins’ set list, aided in part by their high profile on the soundtrack of the 2004 film “Garden State.”
But the tour Mercer and the band are on now will revive less-often-heard numbers such as “Pressed in a Book” and “The Past and Pending” while giving a few their live debuts.
“There’s a few songs, ‘Weird Divide’ and ‘Your Algebra,’ we’ve never done live,” Mercer says on a call from his home in Portland, Oregon.
“‘The Celibate Life,’ ” he says, was possibly performed a few times. “But not much because I’m not a very strong soloist on guitar, and so if that was an important part of the song we would just have to avoid it.”
Mercer seemed thrilled to be back onstage when the Shins played the Just Like Heaven festival in Pasadena in May, as the band returned to live performance for just the second time since 2017.
He’s excited to finally take “Oh, Inverted World” on the road, too, and was happy to talk — in an interview edited for clarity and length — about its making, his memories of it and more.
QSo what’s it been like to go back and immerse yourself in who you were and the music you were playing two decades ago?
AIt’s interesting because I think in some ways it feels like I haven’t changed that much. Some of the songwriting tricks, or whatever, I still use. And in other ways, it seems like another person, you know, wrote all that stuff. In my personal life, I was in a very different situation then than now. It’s strange. It’s a little bit nostalgic. It’s bittersweet, I guess.
QWhat would be an example of something that when you look back at it now, you’re, like, I’m surprised that I used to think that way or play that way or write that way?
AWell, I was shocked to see how often I was using triplets. I don’t know I got really into it. I didn’t understand what it was, this idea of doing almost like a 3/4 beat over a 4/4 beat. But I loved it. And I did it on almost all of the songs, it seems. It’s almost like a dub reggae influence or something.
Q AYeah, there was a fair bit of youthful energy that I admire in the old James. It was kind of like I really desperately wanted to record music that was engaging. And I had become bored of a lot of the music that was popular in the ’90s, sort of the indie scene in the ’90s.
It was a lot of pent-up energy, and then when I got a computer and was able to begin multitracking, I was just kind of like off to the races, so I just I devoted all my time to it.
Q ADescribe making this record when you didn’t really know what was going to come of it.
Did you have a day job at the time you were making the record?
I did. I had sort of a part-time job because I was really wanting to make a push and my goal was to create a record that would get me signed. That would extract me from my life. I was working at this kind of a factory job making ceramic Southwestern-style lighting.
And then a buddy of mine started growing pot using hydroponics, and he showed me how to do that, and I started doing that. Which I look back on just amazed at how dumb I was doing that. Because it was so illegal and a dangerous thing to do. But I was able to pay the rent and just spent my time working on songs.
Q AReally, it was Sub Pop’s response to it. I knew I liked it. I knew that it seemed stronger than certain other songs, but I couldn’t have predicted that it would be kind of THE song that would help us out so much.
But Sub Pop were really into it. The version that they heard, the original version was like a demo version that we released not too long ago. But it was (Sub Pop cofounder) Jonathan Poneman’s recommendation or insistence that I rerecord that demo. I got a better mic, and then I was able to get really noiseless high fidelity. And I used a metronome the second time around. The first one kind of wobbled, tempowise.
Q AIt comes from a conversation I had with my dad, actually. He was describing his younger sister, who had committed suicide. And he was saying she was such a beautiful, wonderful person, and that she would find it difficult to interface with the world outside herself was such a terrible irony. Because she’s exactly the type of person we need more of.
And we had this idea it’s just exactly the opposite of how things should be. Then, if you have that in your mind, you kind of notice it all over the place. Little things.
QHow have you planned the sets for this tour? The full album top to bottom and then a mix of stuff from other albums?
A Q AWhen a lot of these songs were recorded, the drums were done by Jesse Sandoval, but then I would do the bulk of the other stuff. So I didn’t really have a band when this was recorded. So no one really was there for a lot of it.
We’ll have Jon Sortland on the drums, Yuuki Matthews will be playing bass, Patti King on keyboards and Mark Watrous playing lead guitar and, oh my God, violin and synthesizer stuff, too. He kind of does everything.
Q AWhat was it, or when did you realize, that the song “New Slang” was really connecting with listeners?
The title “Oh, Inverted World” — where did that come from?
That’s exactly the plan. It’s really for music fans and fans of the record. I think it’s a special thing.
Your current band wasn’t around when you made the record. How is it different with them?
Will we get new music once you’re done revisiting this original record?
We have probably 10 songs in the can already. I’ve got a Broken Bells record [“Into the Blue” with collaborator Danger Mouse] coming out.