The Shins Pictures

New Reviews: Broken Bells, Jimi Hendrix and BRMC

Last week RS talked up Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach in New Reviews, so today we’re spotlighting Breaking band Broken Bells, a collaboration between the Shins’ James Mercer and Demon Days producer Danger Mouse. The pairing might seem like a strange match, but as Will Hermes writes in his four-star review of Broken Bells, “It turns out the two pop-science geeks are a perfect match. Danger Mouse pushes Mercer’s gorgeous, existential tunecraft outward with Day-Glo dynamics.” Mercer’s lyrics are at their

Published: 2010-03-09 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Danger Mouse, The Shins’ James Mercer Explain the Birth of New Band Broken Bells

When Danger Mouse and the Shins’ James Mercer met backstage at Denmark’s Roskilde festival five years ago, the unlikely duo quickly discovered a mutual fandom. “As soon as I heard the Shins, I wanted to do something with James, no matter what,” Danger Mouse explains. Their partnership took time to develop, but in March 2008, Mercer began a peripatetic recording odyssey, sequestering for weeks on end at Danger Mouse’s Los Angeles home studio. Both were coming off of a series of high-profile, high

Published: 2009-09-30 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Life is good for the Shins

Arts & Entertainment"Thank you very much, Paul. Our next guests are a wonderful rock and roll band with a highly anticipated new album called 'Wincing the Night...

Published: 2007-02-15 Provider: Seattle Times

Hype Monitor: Reykjavik!, Mazes, Ivan & Alyosha

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet to find the ones you need to hear now. The Band: Reykjavik! The Buzz: Icelandic band decimates hardcore, turning out brutal, bratty songs that beg and kick. Listen If: You miss the days when …Trail of Dead was all sneer and volume Key Track: “The Blood,” all galloping drums and stomping feedback and gruesome Birthday Party riffs. The Band: Mazes The Buzz: Forget the new no-fi — Chicago band writes songs that are light and soothing as spring breezes. Listen If: You have an ear and a heart for melodies that lap like the ocean on the beach. Key Track: “I Have Laid in the Darkness,” a lonesome lullaby sure to soothe the heartbroken. The Band: Ivan & Alyosha The Buzz: Smooth, soaring guitar pop from Seattle duo that is plaintive and pristine. Listen If: You’d be curious to hear what happened if the Shins slowed it down a bit. Key Track: “Easy to Love,” the perfect late Valentine for the mutually smitten.

Published: 2009-03-12 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Breaking

News Ticker: Britney Spears, The Shins, EMI Catalog, Nick Oliveri

Photo: Bedder/Getty Contrary to a message posted on her own Website, Britney Spears will not be performing at this Sunday’s Teen Choice Awards, MTV News reports. She will, however, be appearing to pick up the trophy for the Ultimate Choice Award. Shins leader James Mercer told Rolling Stone keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval left the band over creative differences, but Sandoval is telling the Portland Mercury (via Pitchfork) he was straight-up fired. “If James really had comp

Published: 2009-08-07 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Morning News Roundup

Rodrigo Y Gabriela Dominate KRCW’s Indie-Heavy “Sound Eclectic” Event

“You guys had a lot of flavors to choose from tonight thanks for choosing the Shins…which I think is sort of a butterscotch,” quipped a bearded Marty Crandall, keyboard and guitarist of the Portland-by-way-of-Albuquerque quartet, as the band performed before a sold-out audience Saturday night at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. The Shins’ set — which included an almost punk-y mix of oldies like “Know Your Onion!” and “So Says I,” modern classics “Kissing the Lipless” and “New Slang,

Published: 2007-04-16 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Live Shows

SHINS WITHOUT KICK

IN the anatomy of indie music, the Shins bone isn't connected to the hipbone - it's wired straight to the brain. At the Theater at Madison Square Garden Wednesday, the Oregon-based quintet played a cerebral set that was smart and sonically pretty...

Published: 2007-03-16 Provider: New York Post Keywords: Shins, band, Girl, show, music

Starbucks Announces James Taylor CD/DVD Release, Tom Waits Judges Songwriting Contest, The Shins Add Tour Dates

Starbucks’ Hear Music label continues its trend of signing music royalty with plans to release James Taylor’s live CD/DVD One Man Band this holiday season. The set will feature Taylor’s recent greatest-hits-filled concerts from the Colonial Theatre in the Berkshires, as well as the stories that inspired the songs. Phil Collins (evidently not the Phil Collins) spent the last three years compiling footage of Smiths fans from Colombia, Indonesia and Turkey singing karaoke to cuts from Morrissey and gang’s 1987 album The World Won’t Listen. The fruits of the flmmakers’ labors will debut this fall at the Dallas Museum of Art’s tribute to the Smiths. Also on display: Letters a teenage Morrissey wrote to music magazines. Tom Waits, Frank Black, the Cure’s Robert Smith and the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas are among the talented wordsmiths that will judge this year’s International Songwriting Competition. Universal’s DRM-free MP3s are more like DRM-lite MP3s: The songs will still be watermarked to see who’s sharing the files on peer-to-peer networks. The Shins have announced additional autumn U.S. tour dates that’ll keep them on the road through the end of October. Full dates after the jump. 10/5 - Berkeley, CA (Greek Theatre) 10/6 - Santa Barbara, CA (Santa Barbara Bowl) 10/7 - Los Angeles, CA (Greek Theatre) 10/9 - Mesa, AZ (Mesa Amphitheater) 10/10 - Albuquerque, NM (University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall) 10/17 - Atlanta, GA (Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center) 10/18 - Charleston, SC (The Plex) 10/19 - Raleigh, NC (Progress Energy Center) 10/20 - Norfolk, VA (The NorVa) 10/22 - Columbia, MD (Merriweather Post Pavilion) 10/23 - New York, NY (Terminal Five) 10/24 - New York, NY (Terminal Five) 10/27 - Las Vegas, NV (Vegoose Festival) 10/28 - Las Vegas, NV (The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel) Photo: Cardy/Gett

Published: 2007-08-14 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Afternoon News Roundup

The Shins to Self-Release Fourth Album

Keeping pace with the changing atmosphere of the music industry, the Shins revealed that they would likely self-release their fourth album through frontman James Mercer’s Aural Apothecary label. While the band is looking to make a deal that will allow them to keep their masters, they’re also hoping to partner with a label to help assist with the marketing costs, the Shins’ manager said. That partnering label may be Sub Pop, who released the band’s first three albums. “The Shins have been a huge part of Sub Pop’s story. We’d love to continue working with them,” the label’s general manager Megan Jasper told Billboard. The Shins’ next album isn’t due out until at least 2009. [Photo: Getty]

Published: 2008-06-23 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Smoking Section: Modest Mouse, Zooey Deschanel, Kings of Leon

Modest Mouse’s ‘07 disc, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, is so awesome that we were inspired to dial up frontman Isaac Brock and find out what’s on tap. “My big priority is to finish up this Modest Mouse EP,” he reports, adding that tunes like “The Whale Song,” “Satellite Skin” and a track with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (”The horns are frickin’ rad!”) are all repolished outtakes from MM’s last two discs. Also, Brock has been fishing with the Shins‘ James Mercer (”I haven’t caught a thing”), is building a workshop in his basement (”I need a nice bed frame”) and will sing with Frank Black and the Catholics on a re-creation of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘63 debut, Trouble Is a Lonesome Town. Finally, Brock told us that he and Johnny Marr will start writing new tunes in March and that in the spring, MM will hit the road with R.E.M. Says Brock, “I’m not really good at taking it easy.” * * * * “If I cloned myself many times over, started a choir, and that choir sang music influenced by midcentury pop — with a lot of great musicians.” That’s how actress Zooey Deschanel describes Version One, her first album, on which she collaborated with the brilliant M. Ward. The duo, a.k.a. She and Him, first duetted on a cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “When I Get to the Border” while working on the soundtrack to her 2007 film The Go-Getter. “I sent him some of my home demos, and he suggested we record them with some incredible musicians that he knew in Portland [Oregon],” Deschanel tells the S.S. With a band augmented by piano (played by Deschanel), strings and pedal steel, her jazzy lilt soars over cuts like “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today” and “This Is Not a Test.” “I have been writing music since I was a little girl, but the record features songs writt

Published: 2008-02-05 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock Daily

Shins' Crandall Off The Hook In Alleged Domestic-Violence Incident With Former 'Top Model' Girlfriend

Marty Crandall, a multi-instrumentalist for the indie-rock band, is off the hook in an alleged domestic-violence incident involving his girlfriend.

Published: 2008-01-08 Provider: VH1 Keywords: Wincing, Artist, Album, Night, Shins, Away, the, VH1, Domestic-Violence, Girlfriend, Interviews, Rock-A-Bye, Must-Hear, Nocturnal, Acoustic, Crandall, December, Incident, Saturday, Alleged, January, Former, Movies, Photos, April, Chill, March, Model, Radio, State, 2006, 2007, Baby, Hook, Live, News, Rock, With, A-Z, CDs, Off, Top, In, on, TV,

Vegoose Festival Report: Rage Against the Machine, the Stooges, Shins, Daft Punk, More

For three years now, the Vegoose festival has been bringing Las Vegas the sort of eclectic acts the city normally shuns: metal, hip-hop, politically motivated tunage and indie rock’s latest beloved. This year was no exception: the first day alone delivered Mastodon, Public Enemy, M.I.A. and the Shins. Throw in Saturday night performances by Iggy and the Stooges and Daft Punk, and you might just have the most musically diverse day in Sin City history. (For a full photo gallery from Vegoose, click here.) From the start great music was plentiful. Gogol Bordello opened the festival with one of the strongest sets of the weekend. Backed by two percussionist/dancers, ferocious fiddle playing and singer Eugene Hutz’s manic presence, the band won over an audience that seemed delightfully surprised by the band’s gypsy-punk attack. As with many of the afternoon bands, the Vegoose set was only the beginning of their Vegas trip. After performing, the band did a signing in a makeshift Zia Records tent in the Vegoose field, before heading to downtown Las Vegas where bandmembers spun discs at Beauty Bar until 3 AM. Not everything worked. Bands like the Shins (who wore costumes) and Blonde Redhead (who did not) found their more intricate music bleed away by the acoustics of a vast field and competing bands. Vegoose has three active stages and overlap between sets made it hard to see everything even for the most dedicated fans. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of Saturday was competing sets between Cypress Hill and Public Enemy (who arranged for that?). Still, some of the Cypress audience popped over long enough to join Chuck D for a rousing chant of “Fuck George Bush.” Other of Chuck D’s pronouncements on affairs of State might have been a bit over the crowd’s head: His complaints that the Euro and Pound were kicking American ass ellicited a collective “huh?” As night descended with dust filling the air from the dirt field, Iggy and the Stooges came out and gra

Published: 2007-10-30 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows, Festivals