Album Review: Oh, Inverted World by The Shins

"You've got to hear this one song, it'll change your life I swear."

That's not a Shins lyric. I know it sounds as if it should be, with the scansion and everything, but if you want a second line you'll be left hanging. It's a well-known quote from the film Garden State about The Shins' song "New Slang". "New Slang"--that's a memorable title, right? Just like Oh, Inverted World. In fact, memorable, rhythmic titles are a bit of a thing with our friends The Shins. I run my eyes down the track listing and see, not only "New Slang", but "Caring is Creepy", "Weird Divide", "Know Your Onion!", "Girl Inform Me". In a modernist way, they could almost pass for the names of classic theatrical cartoons. "Lady Play Your Mandolin" would be a good name for a Shins song.

I've got a couple of sisters and a mom who are all cooler than me. They all, at variant times, got into The Shins. I never did, even though we all use the same iTunes. Not even the titles enticed me, and you all know titles are my favorite thing. I didn't know one Shins song. So I lazed through life, listening to cheap stuff like The Killers, while the rest of the womenfolk gushed behind me, as if they were blossoming, about tracks like "Girl on the Wing" and "The Celibate Life."

However, when my sisters go to concerts we go together, and when they obtain concert tickets they get me one, too. Thus it was that I ended up at Green Day directly after midterms just as I was digesting the news of a less-than-satisfactory grade, feeling subway-weary and battered about the skull, and thus it was that Clair ambled up to me one morning less than two weeks ago and told me I had two weeks to get into The Shins. Okay, I'll take it.

They've got four albums, all of which we own, and Oh, Inverted World is only the first. I thought I'd take them in order. Yet here I am, nearly two weeks later, and still I'm listening to Oh, Inverted World. Just listening to it over and over again, like a stoner.

So why, you want to know? Did it change my life?

The opposite, actually. It isn't sticking. 

It's sugar on the tongue--I think I like it, but it melts away as soon as I've heard it, and then I forget the way it tasted.

I feel as if I'm cramming for one of those exams where cramming doesn't seem to have any effect. Or maybe I feel as if halfway through a day I remember a great idea I had, and then with a sinking feeling I remember that I only had it in a dream and promptly forgot it when I woke up. No traction, no purchase. If it were a vinyl and I were a needle I'd slide off it without making a sound.

Yet even now as I check the track listing to identify the song currently playing (it's "Know Your Onion"), I can hear Clair singing along in the other room, to words that even her high voice isn't making clear to me.

I thought that was my difficulty at first--the words. Oh, Inverted World has that frustrating Nirvana quality--the vocals are, just barely, too murky to be made out. But at least Kurt Cobain put all his slurred singing on top of leaden tunes so heavy they stuck in your head, so if you didn't know them you could snarl along: "rahrah rah rah, rah rahhh rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah, she's so rah rah, and sellllllf-assuuuured…" And that way, everyone knew Nirvana's songs, even if they never did.

I looked up a few of The Shin's lyrics, and they were lovely stand-alone pieces--rhythmic and abstract, the sort of things that I'd repeat to myself all day long if I read them in a poetry book, or in The New Yorker, or on the back of a Simon and Garfunkel album sleeve. But try as I might, I couldn't connect a single one to a tune.

And it's not as if I don't know the tunes. I can hum snatches of them to myself, little fabric-swatches of melody, but I can't remember what songs they go to. I only know when I can look at my phone while the song is playing and see the title. It's that feeling like when you have a box of fancy chocolates and they give you a little map to identify which is which, but you're holding it backwards and you have the sneaking suspicion that it's your other left, and then you turn it around and reach for one and find yourself wincing as you bite into one of those horrible strawberry things when all you wanted was a truffle.

Only imagine if you bit into those chocolates and all of them were made of thin air, and that'll give you a pretty good idea how I'm feeling right now.

In fact, maybe I'm writing this review just to feel some sense of ownership of the band. If I write the review, I'm thinking, I'll get them on paper and they won't slip through my grasp. I'll be able to go to the concert and actually know them, own them!

(My sister Mary just came in, heard the unidentifiable track I was listening to, said softly, "'Your Algebra'," and sang along in a low voice, too quietly for me to hear.)

I don't know if this is really a review of the album. After all, it's only me to whom this happens. Maybe it's more a review of myself. I've worked okay up until now, but I seem to be a bit defective. Send me back.