You may have heard that Portland is becoming a sort of alternative music mecca of the decade, resembling that of Seattle in the 1990's. In fact, I read an interesting article about the fact that many musicians from Seattle are moving to Portland, due to its greater affordability and its magnetic draw of young creatives and intellectuals. Below is an article published on AZ Central about how The Shins made their move to Portland, with mention of other Portland notable bands. Myself, I have both Shins albums, and I'm quickly falling in love with The Decemberists.
Douglas Wolk Billboard Jan. 30, 2007 12:00 AM
When Natalie Portman told Zach Braff in the 2004 movie "Garden State" that the Shins song "New Slang" would change his life, it changed the shape of the Portland, Ore., indie-pop band's career, too. Two years later, the Shins' Seattle-based label, Sub Pop, is facing one of the biggest and most nerve-wracking opportunities it's ever had - the Jan. 23 launch of the band's third album, "Wincing the Night Away," that's easily the largest in the label's history and the challenge of playing by independent, relatively low-budget rules as the Shins try to grow from a college-mixtape staple into full-on alternative rock stars.
For the first few years, the Shins, originally formed in Albuquerque, N.M., by frontman/songwriter James Mercer, built their audience slowly but consistently. The band's first two Sub Pop albums, 2001's "Oh, Inverted World" and 2003's "Chutes Too Narrow," respectively sold about 1,000 and 16,000 copies in their first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And the albums kept moving steadily since then, thanks to solid word-of-mouth, college-radio play and steady touring. Along the way, Mercer moved to Portland and the rest of the band gradually followed him to the Pacific Northwest.
"Albuquerque's nice," keyboardist/guitarist Martin Crandall says, "but there's not much going on musically, unless you want to watch some ska bands." Portland was a more congenial atmosphere for a group like the Shins. It's home to such indie notables as the Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney and Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, as well as innumerable smallish music venues.
Then the Shins endorsement in "Garden State" came along, and the movie's Grammy Award-winning soundtrack (assembled by Braff) included two tracks from "Oh, Inverted World." "New Slang" (which also appeared in a McDonald's commercial) belatedly became an alternative radio hit. As Mercer jokes, having toured for a year to support its second album, the band went back to touring behind its first album. At the time of the film's peak in late 2004 and early 2005, both Shins albums sold several thousand copies every week.
Even now, "World" moves about 1,000 copies weekly, and "Chutes Too Narrow," a little fewer than that.
Mercer started recording the gentle, varied, lushly produced "Wincing the Night Away" about a year ago, and some songs have been around even longer.
"I'm just so eager to have the thing out," Mercer says backstage at the band's final gig of 2006, a hometown show at Portland's Crystal Ballroom, as the other Shins run around snapping Polaroids that will be included with a British 7-inch vinyl single. "My life right now is just this anticipation."
The 1,500-capacity Crystal is on the west side of Portland, in the downtown area with most of the city's bigger rock clubs. It's not too close to the bohemian neighborhoods on the northeast side of town (where Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval live - the band still rehearses in Crandall's basement) or on the southeast side (where Mercer lives in a house that he recently discovered was where Elliott Smith wrote his first album). But the Shins sold out the Crystal show long in advance. Their audience is much too big for any of the east-side clubs now.
Meanwhile, in the uncertain post-Tower environment, Sub Pop is preparing to sell "Wincing" on a scale it's never attempted before for a new release.
"The most we've had to lay out on street date for any of our releases before is 40,000 for Sunny Day Real Estate," label GM Megan Jasper says. "For this record, we're hoping to do a minimum of 200,000, and I suspect we'll end up somewhere around 220,000 or 230,000. It's always a little bit scary when you're laying out that many records, because you're thinking about returns and oversaturation - that's what we need to avoid."
"I'm taking stuff I learned from going fairly big with the Postal Service 1/8whose album "Give Up" went gold3/8 and applying it," Sub Pop head of retail Andy Kotowicz says. "In its first week, the Death Cab for Cutie record that came out on Atlantic did close to 100,000, so we hope to be in that kind of range."
The first line of attack for the new album is indie stores, the band's initial fan base. "One of the things we did that was unusual for us," Jasper says, "was that in order to make a gesture to the independent stores who've supported the Shins for so many years and so strongly, we offered the Phantom Limb' single only to independent stores from its release, Nov. 21, through the end of the year. It's kind of a big deal for us, because you really don't want to exclude anybody, but we felt it was important to us to make that gesture for independent retailers." The single has scanned about 9,000 copies, as well as another 27,000 copies as a digital download.
Beyond the single, "Wincing" builds on the lacy, dreamy guitar-pop of the Shins' first two albums, expanding the band's range to encompass subtle funk and even a bit of twinkling electronics. Mercer's lyrics are even more elliptical than before - the first line of the album is "Go without, till the need seeps in/You low animal/Collect your novel petals for the stem" - but he still delivers mixtape zingers. (The best is in the chiming kiss-off "Turn on Me": "You had to know that I was fond of you/Fond of Y-O-U").
"We think the album is going to be huge, and I think it's a great record," says Don Van Cleave, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores.
The group is gearing up for an extended world tour beginning in February, with their live lineup newly expanded to include Eric Johnson of Sub Pop labelmates the Fruit Bats.
Still, the Shins will be taking a few months off in the spring, since Mercer and his wife are expecting a baby in May. "Our booking agent wants us to continue touring forever," he says. "I've found it a challenge to focus on the big picture." As for the signs that the Shins will have made it to the next career milestone, Mercer says, "There's always the cover of Rolling Stone. Or having a video on MTV that they're actually playing and not just at 3:30 in the morning."
Comments