James Mercer

I happened to watch a few old clips of The Shins, Broken Bells and James Mercer on youtube recently, and had a few thoughts.

I'm not saying The Shins were underrated, or that they underperformed. Clearly, the commercial boost that Garden State gave them was more than most indie bands receive. They had successive US Top 10 albums and are still very much one of the bands that come up regularly when people write about What was good in that era.

But, nevertheless, I'm still surprised how much I think, as if for the first time, whenever I reintroduce myself to James Mercer at work "Wow, that guy is good ..."

I saw The Shins twice (i think, or maybe it was three times) and really enjoyed them. I do remember, particularly the first time, and maybe the second time, Mercer, the frontman and sole constant member, hardly spoke to the audience, leaving those chores to a jovial sideman. It's not unheard of, but quite unusual.

When I watch clips of him performing on youtube, I'm struck by the seriousness, the concentration - he's not really giving anything, it's all self-contained, apart from the odd slightly self-conscious half-smile. You can describe it as a lack of "charisma" but I'm not saying that negatively. I imagine the songs need a lot of concentration. The voice is strong and supple, the lyrics are many and oblique, the melodies unusual. He's putting care into every syllable.

Because I've been thinking about football in these terms recently, in regard to players who just end up being overrated or underrated due to historical illiteracy and the cult of personality, I wonder if the same can be true about music and songs. Is Mercer actually one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, but just not recognised as such because of what should be entirely extraneous factors? It's probably a silly way to look at it, but just that thought, whenever I see him, with a guitar and a mic, singing one of his many songs, is "I do not see many other people doing this so well, so uniquely". His finest songs really seem like they have been put together, successfully, with a concerted effort to use sequences of notes other people don't use and sequences of words other people don't use, but in the service of beauty and coherence rather than ugliness and obscurity. That's pretty rare.

I remember now, I actually watched The Shins and The Decemberists in the same week in 2005. They were seen as pretty similar bands at the time (I enjoyed the fact that Mercer sang backing vocals on The Decemberists' 2024 comeback single). The Decemberists, who I've seen a few times since, were more crowd-pleasing and memorable. Colin Meloy really knows how to play a crowd. Nevertheless, I'd pretty substantially say I prefer Mercer's songs.

Another little thing from that Shins gig, which I'm not sure if I've mentioned before. My favourite "bit" at the time was towards the end of 'Saint Simon' when, having sung the line in a lower register earlier in the song, Mercer takes it up an octave to sing "Mercy's eyes are blue when she places them in front of you, nothing really holds a candle to the solemn warmth you feel inside of you" which I found a very beautiful, brilliant piece of song. I was disappointed because, in that concert, that was the one thing he didn't do. He just sang it again in the lower octave.

That reminded me of seeing Brian Wilson do Pet Sounds at the RFH a year or two earlier where my favourite bit in all of Pet Sounds, where he goes "Oh Caroline you ... break my heart", just a chillingly beautiful piece of melodic singing, but that was the one bit in the almost perfectly recreated album that was not recreated (I can't remember if he just stayed an octave down or he just didn't sing that bit at all).

And, in both cases, that was a good reminder that often, in music or anything, the best bits are the hardest bits to do. Wilson just didn't have the voice for that particular bit anymore. I imagine Mercer sometimes did and sometimes didn't. Better not to miss the note in a horrible way.

Anyway, there we go, that last bit was off-topic a bit. I hope there'll be another Shins album.