Song Exploder - The Shins - New Slang

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Singer, songwriter, and producer James Mercer of The Shins wrote “New Slang” when he was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It came out as a single and then he re-recorded it for The Shins’ debut album Oh, Inverted World, which came out 20 years ago, in 2001. After Garden State came out, featuring the song "New Slang," that album went gold. And the soundtrack for the movie won a Grammy. Nowadays, James Mercer lives in Portland. I spoke to him from his home studio, and he told me how The Shins actually first started as a recording project, a side project, while he was in another band called Flake Music. In this episode, James breaks down "New Slang" and looks back at how his songwriting and his early home recording skills came together to make this iconic song. For more, visit songexploder.net/the-shins.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode has some explicit language. What are you listening to? The shins. You know him? No. You gotta hear this one song, and it'll change your life, I swear.

That's Natalie Portman and Zach Braff in the movie Garden State, which came out in 2004. And this song, the song she says, will change your life, is new slang. the Shins. Singer, songwriter, and producer James Mercer wrote it when he was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It came out as a single, and then he re-recorded it for the Shin's debut album, O Inverted World, which came out 20 years ago in 2001. After Garden State came out, that album went gold, and the soundtrack to the movie won a Grammy. Nowadays, James Mercer lives in Portland. I spoke to him from his home studio, and he told me how the Shins actually first started as a recording project, a side project.

while he was in another band called Flake Music. And in this episode, James breaks down new slang and looks back at how his songwriting and his early home recording skills came together to make this iconic song. My name is James Mercer. Back in, I guess, 89, I moved here from the UK. My dad was stationed at a RAF base over there.

I just moved back to the States at 18 and just by default went to UNM. and I met this guy Neil Langford. Neil and I were listening to the same sort of music. So Neil and I decided to start our own band. You know, we had fuzz pedals and it was loud and it kind of had some relationship with the grunge vibe of the early 90s.

So that was Flake. It became Flake music because another band was called Flake. I was introducing certain songs that I had written to the band and it was aesthetically different. You know, it was just different enough that the guys weren't that into it. I could just sense it. I started to realize I think maybe I should really learn how to record, maybe get some equipment, and I can just kind of put these things together.

So 96 really is when I came up with the idea, the shins. I asked Jesse, our drummer in Flake, to join me. And the early shins stuff was upbeat and kind of noisy. So the very first stuff I put out that I self-released, it's pretty rock and roll and garagy, I guess I would say. And I don't know where I got the gumption to do sort of a folk song. I just kind of got deeper into recording, and then the songwriting started to change. I was experimenting with the acoustic guitar, and I think it's about 98 when I happened to cross this chord progression that I really liked. So I just created this little set of chords and a melody for it.

I remember showing it to Jesse, standing in the kitchen at 1620 Silver Street in Albuquerque. I didn't have lyrics, though, so I was just scatting for him. But he was cool. He liked it, and it gave me some confidence in the song. But I didn't know what to do with it. So it kind of floated around for more than a year with me just being frustrated. But I had gone and bought a Hewlett-Packard, really not a super-powerful computer. And then a buddy of mine gave me a copy of a program called Cool Edit Pro.

And I started messing with it, and it was just so fun. There were just so many things you could do. And basically I had an SM-57-Sure microphone. It was the most expensive, nicest microphone. I could afford at the time when I was starting this up. So on the demo, the tone and fidelity is sort of predicated on that. You notice the stripes, you're dead in your brides, hope it's right when you die. Oh, and bonnie, dawn breaks like a pull through the hall.

Never should have called, but my head's to the wall and I'm loving. John Poneman, the owner of Subpop, he loved the demo and in fact put out the demo as a single on Subpop. But when I was recording the record, he just felt that if you could get something that would give it more clarity. You know, he was pushing for that. And I was hesitant to attempt it. I didn't get much feedback from the single's release. But one thing I did know was that the girls, around town, they would come up and talk to me and tell me like, that's just a great song. And I was

like, oh, now you're talking to me. You know, so Jonathan's idea of re-recording it, combined with the fact that I was getting this new attention from people in Albuquerque, just really liking the song, I just felt, man, I should put whatever effort I can into this, you know, and just get it as well recorded as I can accomplish here at my tiny micro studio and my, you know, and my, you know, little studio apartment, you know. So I switched microphones from the SM57 to a road NT1. So you get more fidelity on the guitar. I think I was really just experimenting,

figuring it out as I went along, but I recorded just the first bare vocal. Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth, only I don't know how. they got out dear But of course then doubling the vocal is a no-brainer As soon as I figured out I could do that

That's great, let's do that Every song Gold teeth and a curse for this town We're all in my mouth It's awesome Only I don't know how They got out dear It's sort of a song about

The frustration that one feels when they don't have their finger on exactly what they are aiming for. Everything in my life was uncertain at the time. Ending up in your late 20s, you can hardly take psychedelics anymore because there's this stress on you now. You can feel 30 coming, where you're supposed to have your shit straight,

trying to come of age and not succeeding. And it's partly just addressing some omnipresent social culture that I was immersed in, the scene. All my friends, all the people who were in other bands, there's a line in the song that says, Godspeed all the bakers at dawn, may they all cut their thumbs and bleed into their buns until they melt away.

That was based on this imagined rivalry that I had with this woman, Amy Linton, much better songwriter than me, who's also from Albuquerque. She started a band called Henry's, dress that was super hip. It was just so cool, you know. Great songs and cool sounds. You know, they were cooler than us. I don't know. She gave me hope, but at the same time, I was like, God damn it, I want to do that too, you know. Amy was just a big inspiration, and there was also

this sort of angst that I had about that. And she was a baker. So I kind of, in my mind, thought, that's at least honest for me to use that phrase. I had speed all the big as it done May they all cut their thumbs And bleed into their buns till they melt away I had a keyboard Something you buy maybe for the kids You flip a switch and now we've got all kinds of sound effects

So there was a kick drum on there That sounded way better than anything I could engineer With mics and a real kick, it really did So It's me on a keyboard and a tambourine. Dave Hernandez, who put together that baseline and performed it on the demo, he had moved to Portland. And so I had to sit down and learn his baseline and perform it and record it. But there were harmonic moments in his performance that I loved, and I just couldn't get,

I would lose the bass during certain parts of the song. So what I did, my solution was, use the cheesy bass sound on the keyboard and tuck it in with it. In the chorus, I'm throwing this sort of lonely pining vibe into the song. It just seemed like that was the moment where you need to give some vulnerability. It was a jump from my trees and I to dance like the king of the ice so, and the rest of our lives would have fed well. It was a difficult song to sing. I mean, I hadn't put that much work into my. vocals before that. There was just a lot of learning. When you start recording, you're just really

putting the magnifying glass on all of these parts and your own playing, your own ability. For me, it was a little bit embarrassing. It's like, oh, God, and just daunting. But what it was was just my recording skills developed enough. And you get a chance to look in the mirror a little bit when you listen to the song back. And so I think it facilitates the creative process to be able to sort of examine your work. Instead of just sitting and writing, you can throw it down

and then I think you get a little more adventurous all the time. This song, you know, it has a bit of a, there's some texture to it that feels Western. So it inspired just with my lips. I just didn't have a woodblock. And I probably thought, oh, it's kind of cute that I'm doing it with my mouth, you know? But it sounds pretty cool when you record it and add a little EQ.

It passes, you know. And then I created the guitar solo. It starts off with a little, I don't know, like a guitar trick that I had learned, like the year before. So I started there and, you know, I'll walk around the house whistling all the time. And even like hearing a song on the radio, I have a tendency to fill the gaps between the vocals with some. some sort of little line, you know. Usually they're really cheesy. And my dad used to do it all the time,

whistling or humming. So it's sort of inbuilt. And so that's me just kind of filling the gap. So the tambourine, the final hit, and what I did was I took the last one and you open up a whole new sort of interface for Cool Edit Pro. And then you can start manipulating it. You know, you can shift it up, you can speed it up.

It's really cool. I mean, I miss it, this aspect of that program. I think recording for me, you know, it does become something you get better at like an instrument. You know, adding those sound effects and stuff is integral to the quality of the song, of this song. Looking back on this song and its origins and the time of my life that spawn it, That is a particular moment in my life where this song was expressing something unique. I hope it's unique in my life because I was just totally miserable about so many things that were going on. I was striving to do something somewhere else.

I wanted to quit my job. My relationship wasn't quite what it could have been. And I had regrets about that. And it's just I was just, I needed something new. And that's, I'm begging for it in this song. I'm looking in on the good life I might be. Do never define. It's interesting to look back and think about those times

and just how things have changed. I think a lot of bands have that one song that stands out and it becomes a bit of a thing, you know. Like you're just that band who did that one song whatever, and that may be the case with us, but it doesn't change my affection for the song and my understanding of its importance in my life. And now, here's New Slang by the Shins in its entirety. Or visit SongExploder.com. You'll find links to buy or stream new slang,

the music video. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album, album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby,

Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nosrat, Jason Maw, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co.

Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. This episode was made by me with editing help from Tini Lieberson and Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma, and music clearance by Kathleen Smith. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at Songexploader.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.