Turn On Me

The Shins arrived as a peculiarity. Oh, Inverted World came out on Sub Pop in 2001 and was received warmly by a small, devoted audience. The melodies were improbable. The lyrics were literary and deliberately elliptical. When Zach Braff placed “New Slang” in Garden State in 2004, the moment became its own cultural event. Natalie Portman handing headphones across a waiting room. A band from Albuquerque suddenly synonymous with a generation’s relationship to discovery. James Mercer later said the soundtrack residuals were “the first time I really started to make good money.” The songs earned that attention before anyone was paying it. That is the only version of that story worth telling.

Wincing the Night Away arrived in January 2007 and debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 with 118,000 copies in its first week. The highest chart position in Sub Pop’s history at that point. The same opening week, the album held the top position on Top Digital Albums, Top Rock Albums, Tastemakers and Top Independent Albums simultaneously. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. It went Gold, as the debut had. “Turn On Me” was the third single, released on September 3, 2007. Nineteen years ago today. Quieter than the album’s more kinetic moments, it sits in a register Mercer had been working toward. Intimate. Unhurried. A melody that turns the lyric slowly in the light. The album knew exactly what it was doing. So did the song.

James Mercer went on to form Broken Bells with producer Danger Mouse in 2009, a collaboration that proved his songwriting was not dependent on any particular band identity. The Shins continued recording and touring. Wincing the Night Away was ranked among the best albums of 2007 by Q magazine. The band helped define what indie rock could sound like at commercial scale without trading away the thing that made it interesting. Mercer’s writing stayed literary, strange and melodically confident across everything he touched. That is a difficult combination to sustain. He sustained it.