The making of chutes too narrow by the shins - featuring James mercer

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

The Shins formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1996 by James Mercer and Jesse Sandoval. The two of them played in a band with Neal Langford and Marty Crandall called Flake, and decided to form The Shins as a side project. Eventually, Flake ended and Langford and Crandall also joined The Shins. They signed with Sub Pop and in 2001, they released their debut album, Oh, Inverted World. For their second album, Mercer moved to Portland, Oregon and began recording at home. Dave Hernandez replaced Neal Langford and the band finished recording in Seattle with Phil Ek. Chutes Too Narrow was eventually released in 2003. 

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, James Mercer reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Chutes Too Narrow. 

James Mercer: This is James Mercer from The Shins and Broken Bells, and we're going to be talking about the second Shins record called Chutes Too Narrow, and we're going to discuss each song at length, a little bit about the lyrics and the production and the writing of the songs, and I hope you enjoy the show. Yeah, so Chutes Too Narrow is our sophomore record. It was a record that I worked very hard on, I felt that it needed to be good because otherwise I was not a proper artist (laughs), is I think the way I felt. It was like our first record had done quite well, surprisingly well, but that could easily be a fluke. You know, a lot of bands just do one record, you know, and then that's it. So I felt like if I was going to actually have some sort of a career doing music, the second record had to be great. And so it was exciting, but also a little scary, you know, “Is this going to be the moment where the really, truly talented people discover this guy's just a dipshit from Albuquerque?” You know?

In the nineties, I was playing in a couple of different bands with the guys who ended up being in The Shins. You know, we had been in a band called Blue Roof Dinner and that broke up and Neal and I started a band called Flake and Marty and Jesse joined. And I think basically for us, it was kind of a social thing. It was something to do and meet people, it was kind of, it wasn't so much about the music, I think at that point, you know. And I think as I was approaching the end of my twenties, so I was born in ‘70, so I was going to turn 30 at the end of 2000, right? I started to have that stress and anxiety that one gets, you know, that like, “I need to figure something out,” like, “I don't have a career.” I was working odd job. For a while, I was working as a bookkeeper for a property management firm and stuff like that. And then I started growing marijuana in my closet (laughs), you know, to supplement my income and stuff in order to buy microphones and things. You know, just not really having anything sorted out. So I started taking the songwriting pretty seriously because I thought, I saw bands that we had played with early on, you know, bands like the Apples do well, like get signed and then start selling records and have a life, you know? So The Shins starts out of that, basically songs that weren't really working for Flake, I would record on my own. I started recording, got into figuring out how to do that. And so Oh, Inverted World happens and I get signed. And so it was a big deal for me, I guess you can imagine. I wasn't a young guy really, as far as bands go, you know? And so I'm heading into my thirties and I suddenly have what could be a career, but I felt it would only really be a career if the second record was any good. It felt to me, at least, like anybody can spend three years making a record and it should be pretty good, you know? But the second record, I felt this pressure to really, like, if I wanted to have a career doing this, if I wanted to have a life, it better be good. So I felt that pressure of the sophomore record and, you know, traditionally, the sophomore record is the sophomore slump, right? But so Chutes Too Narrow, there was a lot of pressure on me or I was putting it on myself, I think, but all of a sudden, also people were waiting for a record. That had never happened for me before, you know, we had an audience now. It was stressful, I will say that, making this record, but it worked out. 

It was interesting, I mean, it was branching out, you know, like working with Phil Ek, who's just extremely talented and had done a lot of great stuff. Yeah, I recorded probably 75 percent of the record at home in my basement in Portland, and then headed up to Seattle to mix, you know, I thought I was ready to mix, but of course, once you get in there, then you realize, “That would sound a lot better if it was done with this, “ or, you know, new ideas pop up, like, “Let's get violins on that.” Or we had somebody play steel guitar on a song, you know, and that was the cool thing about moving up to the Northwest and being in Seattle at the time is that Phil knows everybody in Seattle. So he can just call up a guy who plays great steel guitar and you know, and somebody who can do violin and things like that. And we borrowed a Nord from somebody so we could get some cool sounds on one of the songs. I generally covered a lot of the instruments, but everybody was there in the studio. I don't think Marty and Jesse had moved to Portland yet, but Dave lived in Seattle, Dave Hernandez. So that was the first lineup change was Neal was gone at this point. And Dave came in and he's just a terrific musician, a great guitarist. And he, (laughs) I remember at the end of, I guess, recording “Young Pilgrims,” right, which would have been the last song we recorded. And he was like, “Victory, I'm on every song!” (laughs). And he was stoked about that. But it was done similarly to Oh, Inverted World, yes, it's like, you know, I would put the song together and kind of arrange it in my head. And then Jesse and I would rehearse and I would play guitar with him in the basement there in Northeast Portland and get the structure together. And then when it was time to record the drums, we would put on headphones and I would run my guitar through the computer and then into Jesse's ears so he could follow along and we would do it that way. So we'd get his take down and then I could fudge things around, of course, in the computer after he had recorded. Yeah, so that was the method basically. It's kind of funny that we never used a click track, I always use a click track now, but back then I didn't, I don't know. I don't know if I even knew how to do that or sort that out. But yeah, so we would just go for it, get the take, then I'd add like a bassline over it or something or have Marty come in and do a bassline, whatever we needed to do.

There was a huge leap forward as far as production, talent, and gear. I think the only preamps I had when I did Oh, Inverted World were on a little Mackie 1202 (laughs). You know, the little Mackie, the tiniest one. That's all I had for preamps, you know. And then I had one. Rode NT1 microphone that was like a large diaphragm microphone that sounds, it sounded good, you know, for 300 bucks at the time, it was a big investment for me, but it sounded great. I mean, it probably sounds like a $2,000 mic, you know. I was using Cool Edit Pro on the first record, and then Avid came out with the Digi 001 and so it had a preamp on it. So I figured, “Oh, this will be my first nice preamp.” So it was like a two in one deal. And so that's what I recorded most of the, the tracks on Chutes Too Narrow with, which is just, you know, it's an adequate converter. And so I got better gear, but mainly it was Phil Ek coming in on Chutes Too Narrow and his mixing abilities and his just sort of intuitive understanding about just all the stuff that you need to know to really mix a record properly. And we had access to some really great gear at Avast! Studios up in Seattle. And we mixed on a big, nice mixing deck, you know, God, what did they use at Avast? I think it might have been an API deck, just high quality stuff. And one of the songs, so I had this song called “Mild Child” that I really liked. And I thought, “Let's record this here with all this great stuff and put that on the record.” And it just didn't work. We actually had Jeremy from Modest Mouse, Jeremy Green, come in. And he is such a wonderful drummer, but it was almost like he was too good. I couldn't play properly with him (laughs). It was really weird. So it just, that didn't work out. So I realized, “Okay, I've got to write a song. I need another song for this record.” So I spent a couple nights staying up after everybody went to bed. And going out to the van, I was staying with Dave Hernandez while we were recording. And so I would go out to the van and just stay up all night trying to write this song. And that was “Young Pilgrims.” So once I had that done, we went in and recorded that from scratch. Yeah, at Avast! with Phil at the helm. 

On the first record, I was thinking a lot of, I wanted it to be like Ocean Rain, Echo & the Bunnymen. Like, that was like, to me, the pinnacle of what you could achieve. Which means, you know, tons of layers of arranged, whatever you could find, you know. But this record, yeah, I wanted it to be a little bit more stripped down. You know, this whole record, Chutes Too Narrow,  while I was recording Oh, Inverted World, like maybe I was done even with Oh, Inverted World and sort of packing up my things to move to Portland, I went to the thrift store next door to my little apartment and I found this copy of Harvest by Neil Young. You know, I had heard like “Heart of Gold,” right, because it was on the oldies radio or the classic rock station would play that. And I loved it, it's a great song, but I didn't know anything about Neil Young. You know, my dad wasn't into Neil Young so that would have been right where I would have heard something like that. And so, that record was like a total revelation to me. And the really straightforward production that's on there, I mean, except for, “A Man Needs a Maid,” right, which is all orchestral and everything, but a lot of it, I mean, shit, some of it's live stuff, you know, just really straightforward. But I really loved that some of those songs are just recorded so naively and I thought, “God that really showcases how good of a song it is.” You know, if you don't have a bunch of crazy arrangements going on, it’s just you know, acoustic guitar and a bass and a little bit of drums maybe or something. So I was leaning towards that I wanted to be a little bit more honest production wise on Chutes Too Narrow.

“Kissing the Lipless”

I should load up the track listing for Chutes Too Narrow, but in order. I don't have it in order for some reason. Okay, here we go. Wikipedia has it. So “Kissing the Lipless”, man, you know, it's kind of a dissonant chord. It's like a major seventh that it starts with. And so to me, what I was thinking was My Bloody Valentine. So I was thinking that, which is so weird. I mean, it doesn't sound anything like that stuff. I'm playing it on acoustic and stuff, but probably when I had written it, it was more droney or something. So it started out as that sort of a thing. And then just the rhythmic side of it. I think I was just searching for something different, something unique, rhythmically. And it kind of became this, yeah, sort of upbeat, angsty pop thing. That fuzz solo, that's actually like the SansAmp plugin that they used to have in ProTools, is the fuzz. I didn't have a proper fuzz pedal at the time, but I remember using that to great effect often. I would always put it on the snare, I wouldn't allow the snare to be on the record unless I ran it through the SansAmp plugin. Yeah, I quite like that song. It's popular, I mean, we always play it live. 

That song, in a way, “Kissing the Lipless,” the title is kind of an inside joke about Neal, our old bandmate. Who we all adored, but was kind of in a state where he was just too distracted, I think to play in a band and go on tour all the time and stuff. But we would give him shit because he kind of didn't have any lips (laughs). He was kind of, he kind of was one of those guys with just no lips, you know? And I guess I had certain animosities towards him. I think he, of all the bandmates, struggled the most with the transition from being in Flake, where we were all four partners and wrote together and shared the money and did all that. He just really struggled, I think. He was struggling with so many things at the time, but one of them was directed at me and it was that, “Now I'm this fancy pants songwriter guy and oh,” You know, he just was waiting for any moment for me to get a big head or something. So he was always just sort of at odds with me. You know, felt like any decision I made was dictatorial and stuff. And so we just kind of struggled. So I think that's me, it's about him, but it's also about like ex girlfriends that I, you know, it's like when you're writing a song, you just kind of use whatever you can do to get the damn lyrics written. You know, he's in there, he was such an important relationship for me. Neal Langford is the guy who met me in like 1989, when I was fresh from England, came to the States and just graduated high school and he was in a band. He was in a working band and he was like 16, but he was in a band that would play nightclubs and stuff and get paid. And he and I just really hit it off right off the bat and he is the one who really, you know, he would encourage me to play like, “Dude, do that song. I know, you know how to do that Creedence Clearwater Revival song, just play it for them.” You know, we'd be drinking beers or whatever, he'd be like, “Play it, watch, show my friends, you can do it.” He is that guy, you know? And then he invited me to join his band just as an, you know, like a, what rhythm guitar, you know, and I just knew how to do cowboy chords. But he was like, just very encouraging and, you know, liked hanging out with me. I loved hanging out with him. We just had a similar sense of humor. We would just, one of those friends where you just like, you know, crack up all the time and immediately you can just kind of look at him and he'll know what you're thinking about whatever's going on. You know, and you just both start giggling and stuff. So he was that guy. He really changed my life in that way. I was shy and, you know, I wanted to play music and I wanted to get into that stuff. But  I was shy, so it was hard, you know, and I didn't know anybody, but he just really took my hand and got me on stage. So it was an important relationship and it just kind of, it kind of fell apart. And there was a lot of stuff that led into that. There was substance abuse and, you know, and then the change of this sort of power dynamic shifting because he and I used to write most of the stuff I would say for Flake, you know. But I totally reconciled with him and we became really close. I mean, whenever I was going through something difficult, I could talk to him and, and he did the same and he was going through a lot of stuff. And we were there for each other. For years, for the last 10 years, which I'm so thankful for, you know, and it is hard because it's, you know, he was somebody I would talk to once a week. And I still have those moments where I, you know, it's that thing where you go, “Oh, I'm gonna, I'll call Neal, I'll tell him or I'll send this to him,” you know. And it's just bizarre, I have the same thing with Richard Swift, you know, you just, it's just that thing, it's like you keep grieving because it keeps, you keep thinking that they're alive. It's a strange, strange thing. And it's only in the last five years that I've begun to experience this.

You know, Flake was playing the nightclubs in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And so it had to be kind of rock and roll, it had to be loud generally, and I think Neal's tastes were sort of more along the lines of Superchunk and stuff like that. So pop punk stuff, which I enjoy too, but it just, I started wanting to do something different. I was longing for the music of, I guess, my youth, you know, like I said, Echo & the Bunnymen and stuff. I was like, I was longing for those moments in music where you actually get the shivers, you know. And you don't really get that from certain types of music that are great, but I guess I was like, “Wouldn't it be cool to be able to pull that off?” Some sort of delving into songwriting to the point where you can elicit that sort of response. But that stuff doesn't work on stage in 1996 in Albuquerque, it just doesn't. You know, you can't bring up an acoustic and sing a little folk number (laughs). It's just not gonna work. People are shit faced, they're doing shots of tequila, snorting lines in the bathroom. You got to bring it (laughs). 

“Mine’s Not a High Horse” 

I've never been As social as I am now, you know, so in my twenties, I really was tight with Neal and Marty and Jesse. Flake music, like we were just bros, you know. And then I would have a girlfriend here and there, but otherwise I didn't really know the people in Albuquerque very well, like the people in the scene. I would hear things through the grapevine or whatever, you know, the people were upset that we left. I mean, especially, there were a lot of people at that time in the nineties that really were invested in the idea that we could have a great music scene in Albuquerque, you know, and wanted to, they just worked hard at it. A guy named Joe Anderson, who ended up owning a bunch of nightclubs and he's still doing well in Albuquerque and was a great help to us. He wrote our bio, you know, for the first record and stuff. Really neat guy. But he was upset that I wanted to leave, you know, and I didn't, I guess I never, I didn't realize that anyone cared, I guess, (laughs), you know, gave a shit. Flake had done pretty well, but we couldn't sell 300 tickets to a show. So, you know, we would open up for the bands that came through and stuff like that. And then The Shins, you know, for a while there, The Shins was just a two piece. It was me and Jesse the drummer from Flake and we would do these Shins songs, you know, and that didn't really go very far. So when I started recording is when things changed and then, you know, all of the interest in The Shins was from out of town, really. So I guess I was just like, “Okay, made sense to move.” And like I said, I had Matt McCormick and Greg Brown who were living up in Portland. And another friend, Chris Kosky. And so I was like, “That's a soft landing.” And it was like a place that was affordable that I could just, I don't know, get closer to my brother up in Seattle. So I just kind of busted a move.

Yeah “Mine's Not a High Horse,” was really the thing that I was thinking of when I started laying down the lyrics was a conversation that I had with a guy named Matt McCormick who had filmed, well he ended up doing a video off of Wincing the Night Away, “Australia.” But he was just a really neat guy and he's now a professor of film back East. But I guess we had a conversation and I just kind of, I just remember disagreeing with him about some stupid thing. I forget what, some political thing or philosophical point of view that he had. And I was just kind of like shitting on it. And I just came away from the conversation, just worried that like, “Oh my God, he thinks I'm a piece of shit.” (laughs) I just remember feeling that way, like, “Oh, he must think I'm an awful person” because I was maybe being too facetious in the way that I was handling him. And so that was this sort of impetus for that song. But like I say, like you get a vague concept of what the song's about, and then you need to finish the damn song, you need to, you know, not every single detail in the song is about that conversation or anything. It's kind of becomes a metaphor for all kinds of relationships and situations I've bee in in my life.

So that guitar solo I wrote and recorded and I really loved it. This is an Echo & the Bunnymen,  it’s a Will Sergeant type solo to me. I mean in my mind, you know, I don't know if it sounds like that to everybody else, but to me I was like, “Oh that It feels that way.” And actually I remember playing with Preston School of Industry, you know, Spiral Stairs from Pavement started that band and we toured with them. And he came to me one night, he was kind of half drunk and he goes, “I've figured you out, man. It's Echo & the Bunnymen.” And I was like, “Yep.” (laughs) He had sorted it out. So yeah, that song's always fun. And I used to play it live. I used to do the solo live, but I'm not much of a guitarist in that sort of, I'm not great at lead stuff, you know, so it would often end with a sour note or something. So I finally gave that up and handed it over to Dave, you know, to do it properly. And now Mark does it.

“So Says I” 

“So Says I,” I guess I was thinking about The Clash, I guess for some reason, which is strange, but I guess the fact that it's a minor chord, but it kind of has this, to me, what I felt was kind of like an early punk sort of thing. I mean, it has that shuffle to it, which isn't quite, doesn't quite fit in that vein, but to me, I guess the minor chord aspect of it and the sort of aggressive nature of it, I was thinking The Clash. And I thought, “Wouldn't it be cool if somebody was doing songs that felt that way?” or something. I mean, this is me (laughs), this is me once again, I guess thinking about the way I am sometimes perceived during conversations. I was thinking about the political sort of mindset of most of my peers and I guess how I think or I thought at the time that they were naive. And so I was kind of just riffing in my head about like this back and forth that seems to constantly be going on between, you know, opposing views of how to govern people and how to sort of manage society. “So Says I” was really, yeah, just me in my own head going back and forth about how fascinating it is, I guess, that these perspectives are at opposition and really it's, you know, you can understand why, you know, somebody who is say a Marxist, feels the way they feel or thinks the way they think if you get to the premises that they are starting from, the fundamental sort of ideas that they have in their head. It's like an easy train of thought to get to Marx. And on the other side you can see why somebody would have a very different view because they have fundamental premises that are very different and so there's this back and forth but to a large extent I think both are true, you know. There's like, I guess if, yeah, one of the things I feel like is you need to be able to hold multiple ideas in your head at the same time. And that song kind of is going through that in a very rudimentary way. In a two minute and forty eight second pop song (laughs).

The demand was in the 90s that you never make any money at all. I mean the ethos of, I don't know what, I mean, it's so funny because like punk rock starts out and it's just basically bratty fucking fun shit, you know, “Let's break windows,” right? The Sex Pistols, you know, and then it slowly turns into this strange thing, especially in America, I think it just became this, there was like this dogmatic fucking religion that it became, you know, and just the idea of wanting to have a life was bourgeoisie, you know, wanting to be able to like eat is freaking wimpy, you know, or something. When I finally did get signed and started to develop some sort of a career, I was 30. So you're just more pragmatic, your 20s are gone. Like your youth is basically gone, you know. And yeah, I think I was just a little bit more practical. I don't know, it's funny. I remember yeah Modest Mouse did like a commercial of some kind, you know and I was just like stoked for him. I don't know, maybe being in Albuquerque, man, we were all about money. We're all about getting paid, we really were. There were constant arguments with promoters and stuff, like, you know, “We need to get paid.” And we'd, you know, people would try and rip us off and stuff. So I don't know, it seems like it was a back East, college kid sort of attitude by the end of the 90s, you know to be like, “Oh don't sell out, you can't sell out.” And then we we did some selling out for sure and the shit that we got was generally from like kids who had trust funds, you know, like, of course they don't fucking understand, you know, they just think they think you're in their situation. I guess they assume you're just like them and have, you know, some fucking huge fund that you can rely on or something, some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or something, but we didn't.

“Young Pilgrims”

“Young Pilgrims,” man, it was just so stressful putting that song together. I mean, it was under duress, it was like the clock is running here, the studio is expensive and I just had to get a song done and it had to be good. I really felt like this whole record just, it needed to be strong, and I was worried it wouldn't be, you know, as you always are. So in writing this song, it was an anxious activity doing it. And so it was, like I said, two nights basically spent in the van writing and you know, I'd write until I just was completely exhausted and then go inside. I remember on the second night when I came into the house, I was so sleep deprived and so just stressed out that I was hallucinating. I remember seeing like a hand come out of the corner of the room and stuff. It was just really weird and, you know, just would crash and then have to wake up, just a few hours later to go off and get back into the studio. And so I could hardly tell if it was good or not.

The chorus where I say, “Grab the yolk from the pilot and drive the whole mess into the sea?” (laughs). Yeah, like everybody I think, there are times where you're just kind of frustrated in life or you're lonely or just things don't seem to be going well and you think you know, “Is it all worth it? Like what am I doing?” You know, life can be pretty miserable at times. Yeah and I think there's a side of me that sometimes just can feel like, I'm just completely over it. Luckily those moments have been fairly rare, but you know, I'm kind of referring to that. It's funny, I was on a flight, you know, in the mid 2000s, and a gentleman from behind a couple rows, he recognized me. And he wrote a note and had it passed to me and it said, “I hope you're not planning on grabbing the yoke and driving the whole mess into the sea right now,” (laughs). And he was just, and said he really enjoyed my music. So yeah, that's a pretty good line though (laughs).

It's one that we always play because it works and it's straightforward. The production is easy, you know, it's easy to pull off. It's something that I'll play it, you know, even if I do like a solo show or something. But that's again, see that's weird, I was in this stage, like lyrically that song, it refers to the young pilgrims. So that's like, I'm thinking of the, whatever those Christian groups are that come to your house and leave and they want to speak to you and leave flyers and all that stuff, you know? Again, I guess at this time I was just sort of trying to figure out what the fuck do I believe?” like, “What am I supposed to believe? What's the proper thing to be?” Yeah, that Chutes Too Narrow thing was like coming to an impasse, you know, when you're trying to understand somebody's point of view or their belief, and you're going through it and you realize there's some logical breach, and it just doesn't work for you, I guess. Since I was a child, those things would happen to me often, you know, just like, because there's so much that's expected of you as a kid, for you to just sort of buy into. And then, you know, if you think about it too much, you start to realize, “You guys are full of shit, like a lot of shit.” (laughs) “What is going on here?”

“Saint Simon”

“Saint Simon” is, man, it's again, it's that same stuff. It's funny, I didn't realize there was so much of that, so much of what was going on right there was me kind of struggling with beliefs that people around me had and how I seemed to stray from them. And it was causing me a lot of angst, or I guess it was kind of stressing me out, it must have been. I guess my family are pretty conservative people, I would say. I mean, there's a religious thread, but it's pretty, my dad was somebody who was raised Catholic and then lost his interest in it along the way. But then, in the 80s, he, I think, started to worry that, “Oh my God, my kids, have no training in this or any religious understanding at all,” because we just weren't raised with it. And so there was a bit of an attempt to go to church and stuff like that. And I think it was just, it didn't take, you know, it just didn't take. It was too late maybe or whatever, I don't know. And thank God it didn't take because I think it's interesting that in order to get somebody to be religious, you've got to start so early with them that they don't have the capacity to question. And maybe that's not true. I mean, there's people who find religious faith later in life, you know, but it's difficult for me to understand how it goes down, but so it was kind of about that stuff.

Marty played the piano on “Saint Simon” and it was that Nord. That was why we borrowed that Nord. It was like a stage piano by Nord, you know, which was like the most expensive piece of gear we had ever touched probably at that time. I don't know, it was probably two thousand bucks or something. This was written on acoustic guitar, like probably all of these songs were. And just playing with chords, trying to push myself a little bit. I guess I came up with the main, the verse was the first thing. There's not even really a chorus in a way on this song, but yeah, and just kind of kept elaborating. I remember that Jesse really liked the transition into, I guess, what would be the bridge. He really loved it. He called the song, “Balls a Tingle,” because he said it made his balls tingle (laughs) when we would go into that. So, you know, like the “la la las” and stuff, he just really liked it. So Jesse was such a muse too. He was so great because he was just very supportive. You know, it's great to have a bandmate who's really just, you know, like tells you that they're impressed and that they love that song. And “Man, I can't wait to play that song” and stuff like that. It's great. And my bandmates nowadays are very much like that. And it's really wonderful, you know? 

That's a song that you can't imagine coming out in 1995, you know, by a band on Sub Pop. Elliott Smith was huge, I mean, he had certainly, yeah jumped in a similar direction, I suppose, as me. And I remember a buddy of mine who lived up in Portland here, he sent me a cassette copy of a few of the Elliott Smith songs, and I was really impressed with it. It was just beautiful and melodic and touching and the lyrics were terrific and it was, you could tell it was recorded on the cheap, you know. Actually, it's funny because I ended up buying the house that he lived in when he recorded Roman Candle and those things, just randomly. It was kind of a music house, but I didn't know. And my drummer, Jon Sortland, he had actually lived there as well. It's just funny, like Janet from Sleater-Kinney found out and she was like, “You bought that house? You own that house?” You know, like, it's such a strange coincidence. When I heard the Elliott Smith songs that Greg sent me on cassette, I was just blown away. I mean, I think that gave me the courage to do what I was doing, which was like kind of jumping off from the stuff that had been so effective for us on stage in Albuquerque, you know? And like I said, a lot of these songs were in their infancy and I had introduced them as ideas to Flake. And it just wasn't working. Nobody was into it, and it wasn't, we could just tell it wasn't going to be great when we played it at the bar on Saturday night, you know? So, that was one of the reasons I started recording myself, was because I wanted an outlet. That's kind of why The Shins started, was just to have an outlet for certain songs, you know, things like “Young Pilgrims” or “Saint Simon.” You know, that's just not gonna, that wasn't gonna translate.

It's sad because I kind of struggle now hitting those high notes. Just, I don't know, I guess getting older is what it is, I don't know. Or maybe I just kind of blew my voice out touring so much, you know, but yeah, I always wanted to sound like a girl, you know, when I would do those things and always wished that we had a girl in the band. And now we have Patti, so she can do all that stuff. It's great. It's really not that many layers. I mean, it's probably four tracks or something. So, you know, you just kind of lay them down and put reverb on them and it sounds like other people once you do that. So they just kind of worked. I mean, I don't know the theory behind it, I don't know why they work, you know, but I've always loved that when you have a melodic line that works well under multiple chords. So maybe that sounds silly because that's probably just, if you're in the same key, maybe that always works, but I always love it when something just repeats and the chords underneath shift and it changes the context of the melodic line. So that was an experiment in that. On Oh, Inverted World, I had found a, like a child's violin, like this tiny little violin. I taught myself to do a little bit and you know, if you only need to play four notes, you can sit and figure it out and do that. And so on Oh, Inverted World, I put some violin on there, but this was the first time we had, you know, players. Actually on Oh, Inverted World, I had somebody come in and play French horn, which was terrific. So yeah, having somebody come play violin, that was like stepping it up. It was kind of cool. You know, I, again, it's like, I've always wanted to do a record that felt. And on this record though, I wanted to have things pretty stripped down. That song just really seemed to want it.

“Fighting in a Sack”

This song was actually a fun song to play live. We were doing it a whole step up live and when I began recording it, I was struggling to actually sing in tune at that higher key. And so I dropped it a whole step down and then was able to figure it out. But I always felt like, “Damn it, I wish we had done it a little bit higher.” But there's something about playing live where you, I don't know what it is, the energy or something. I could go for it and just pull it off. But in my basement, I was just having a hard time mustering the energy. So that's the main thing I remember about “Fighting in a Sack” is just that it had a little bit more spice to it live than it does on the record. You know, in the nineties, back in Albuquerque, we would rehearse in this little basement and everyone seemed to be in a battle to like, I don't know, be heard. It was just, we all had distortion pedals going and, you know, like I said, we kind of wanted to sound like Superchunk or something like that. And so the only way that I could hear my voice through the PA, this crappy PA we had, was to sing at a register that was higher than the sounds that were being created. You know, so I would really have to belt loud and at a high register just to be able to hear. That's totally how that started. I mean, I think otherwise I probably would sing very differently if it weren't for the sort of type of music that I learned how to play to.

It was more of that stuff, it's crazy how this whole record is like that, it's kind of about the same sort of thing. Yeah I was just sort of thinking about, you know, like that, we need to move beyond sort of these ancient things. And I guess I would say it's, I struggle to comprehend the fundamental premises that people seem to have total fucking faith in. So that'll have to be a new song because when I wrote this, I don't think I really understood where people were coming from. And now I think I kind of do, and it's scary to me. When you grow up, I mean, you’re given whatever bullshit they tell you about Santa Claus and all that. And then it turns into Rousseau, the very humanist sort of perspective on life. Then you actually experience life, and you observe human beings and what they do, and you start to realize Rousseau seems like a bit of a child, you know, in a way. And so shortly after this, I realized that I'm just not a humanist at all. And then you realize, “Whoa, you've just taken a big step away from the bulk of modern philosophy,” is gone because that is a fundamental sort of perspective, I feel like. And so that's I think after this it became very difficult and I stopped even fucking worrying about it after that (laughs), when I realized that, a lot of my confusion was coming from the fact that I felt like I had to be a humanist. I had to believe that shit, you know, and then I dropped it and then things started making a lot more sense to me, I guess.

“Pink Bullets”

Yeah, “Pink Bullets,” it's a very sentimental, almost maudlin, nostalgic thing about some love that you had in the past. But I think that this period of time, I really I was lonely for a long time, I think (laughs). Really, I was a lonely for a long time. So it's this fond memory of a girl that I dated in England when I was a teenager, you know, like my first proper girlfriend, I suppose. And so I kind of use that as fodder to build the lyrical content. And yeah, so it's like thinking back about being a kid in high school and being your typical introvert in high school or whatever and stuff, and then finding somebody who really appreciated you and liked you and it's like kind of shocking and kind of blows your mind, you know. And she was a really good looking kid and was popular therefore. And she was really funny and fun and it was just a very strange thing. Cause I was like, I was into skateboarding, which wasn't cool at the time, that was not anything to be proud of at the time, you know, it was just like something I could do where I didn't have to deal with anybody and she just kind of found me interesting somehow. I don't know what the hell she saw in me, but it was great. And we, of course you don't end up working out or anything like that, but it was a really cool thing for me at that time. It was like, “Oh, I felt real suddenly,” you know what I mean? It's strange. And so I guess it's out of this fondness for her and gratitude, I guess, in a way.

Yeah, “Pink Bullets” is like, I guess I was thinking, “Pink, in that it's like love,” you know? But “bullets, in that it's powerful and like, can just blow you away,” you know? It's so powerful that it could destroy you or something, I guess, so “Pink Bullets.” And then, I do remember the lyric about the brick, and that was me thinking about, God, Krazy Kat. Do you remember Krazy Kat comics? It's extremely old, I mean, they were probably popular in the 20s, but Krazy Kat and Ignatz Rat were this strange pair and the rat would throw a brick at Krazy Kat and then Krazy Kat would hearts would come out of him, or her, and I don't know which, but it would cause the cat to have this deep affection for the rat that would abuse him. So I don't know, it was very strange. Really interesting comics, I have like a book of it that I bought in high school. Yeah, so that was where that was from. This is the one where I say like, “Since then it's been a book you read in reverse, so you understand less as the pages turn.” And then I say, “Or a movie so crass and awkwardly cast that even I could be the star.” (laughs). I love that line. I was very proud of that when I came up with that one. Yeah you kind of long for younger days in a way, or some naivety that you had in the past. And, you know, I think everybody's had those moments, I suppose.

This song, I think probably was influenced by Neil Young, the rhythm of it. I think that when I was writing it, it was a straight sort of thing, it didn't have that sort of boom chicka boom, you know, whatever that is. So that's Neil Young, I think just that sort of rhythm and a way of playing the acoustic. And then Dave came up with the guitar line, which added a lot, I think. You know, it's a pretty basic song, it's like verse chorus and a bridge and then at the end I did that refrain or whatever, which was something I had done on Oh, Inverted World. It's just kind of like tie things up at the end. It really kind of was an easy song to write, I guess I'd say.

“Turn a Square”

Yeah “Turn a Square.” I wanted a really cool bass line that felt like the Beatles, kind of like one of their groovy sort of mid sixties songs. And so, cause I have this fondness for older music, I was thinking like, “Could I do a number that kind of referred to that or that like would even maybe work back then, but would work today too?” So yeah, that was the attempt there. God, I'm trying to remember the lyrical content of that song. Oh, it's like a pop, it's a very pop love song. It's like, “Oh, this girl's amazingly attractive and I'm drawn to her.” You know, it's that sort of an idea. So really sort of old school, you know, in a lot of ways.

That's Dave. Dave did that guitar solo and wrote it and everything. I remember trying to write something and I couldn't figure out anything good. And then he came up with that and I really liked it. I mean, we were listening to The Strokes at that time because their first record comes out in like 2001 or something, right? That really great first record? Yeah. So we were listening to that record when we were touring for Oh, Inverted World and stuff. So it was definitely in my head and yeah, maybe I was thinking, I mean, they're just so goddamn good and tight and all that. They just always seemed to me to just be such a powerful rock group. I hope it does sound Strokes-ish.

“Gone for Good”

Yeah, I really like this song. You know, I love country music. My dad was a country music singer, and so I grew up going into nightclubs, and my dad would be up on the stage singing, you know, and I would end up falling asleep, I guess because my parents wouldn't afford themselves a babysitter or whatever. My sister and I would be there in the nightclub, breathing all that smoke, all the cigarette smoke, and we would just fall asleep in the booth and stuff. So I just, I really kind of grew up on a lot of country music and so I have this fondness for it. And I guess in a way too, this song, I was thinking it felt a little bit like some of the music that New Mexican bands would do. It has a little bit of a Mexican sort of influence to it. And so it's funny because I really just, I guess I felt very free to just try whatever the hell I wanted because it's kind of weird that there's this like country song on this record.

Originally it was called, “A Call to Apathy.” And I guess, yeah, I thought “‘Gone for Good,’ it’s more catchy. Let's do that.” But then later somebody had the demo or something and they were like, “Why'd you change the title, dude? ‘A Call for Apathy,’ that's great. Instead of “A Call to Arms,” you know, it's “A Call to Apathy.” You know, it's a breakup song. It's kind of like, “Look, I've had enough of this shit. I gotta move on from this relationship.” And so I was trying to articulate that in some clever way, I think. God man, I was really, the thing that I regret most about a lot of the relationships I had in my twenties was that I struggled so much. I really had a hard time letting people down. So I would have a relationship that would last longer than it should, you know, because I just didn't, it was so difficult for me to just break it off, you know, and I think that is lazy and it was weak of me sometimes. And I think I'm kind of angry at myself even writing this song, you know, “Just want to say, this is what needs to happen.” Like, you know, “We're not married, it'd be better for you and better for me if we just, yeah, separated or I guess went our separate ways.”

Well the other thing I remember about this song that's kind of neat is that we filmed the video for “Saint Simon” in Mexico. And when I went down there, our host, who was kind of the production guy in Mexico, he really loved this song. And he had translated the lyrics into Spanish. And he said it reminded him very much of this mariachi song that he adored. And he had the mariachi band play it for me. This song that he felt was similar. And I was so touched. I remember just kind of having to hide my eyes because I was starting to tear up (laughs). I was like, “This is too much,” you know. Really, really neat moment.

“Those to Come” 

It's funny because I had played that song a few times in Albuquerque when it was just a two piece, when it was just me and Jesse, you know, so I would just do that guitar part, Jesse would just kind of play some interesting stuff on the drums, just kind of go along with me. What am I singing about there? I think, I'm thinking about parenthood, which is strange because I wasn't in any kind of relationship where I wanted to have kids or anything, but I always wanted to have kids. I always knew I wanted to be a dad, I think. Even when I was very young. In fact, my mom tells me that when I was very young, like a toddler, and just learning to speak, I would tell her that I remembered things from when I was a dad. That, “Back when I was a dad, I did that and my kids would do that.” You know, I would have these weird things. So I don't know, it's always been in my head, I guess, that I wanted to be a dad. And so this song, I think I'm thinking about what a strange thing it is to create people and that there was a time before I existed. And I guess, what is it that we experience when we're alive and where does it go once we're gone? You know, it's so strange. I think one of the strange things I was thinking about is how everything we perceive is just interpreted, right, in our minds. It's a model that we create inside our minds of the world without. Like you sitting there, you know? And I'm a pretty pragmatic person. I believe you are sitting there, in a room somewhere in the United States, I suppose. But nevertheless, it's just simply my eyes and my ears, and it's all being interpreted by this computer and then simulated inside my brain. It's an odd sort of thing, I guess, to realize how tenuous our connection to reality is, I would say. And so some of that song is about that and just kind of pondering those things and like, “There are these humans that are coming,” I was thinking partly like, “that one day I would have children and who are they and where are they?” And that it's just an odd thing that we're born and then we experience the world and reality as we would call it, is actually just this moment where we are alive to perceive it and create it in our own minds and then we die and it disappears utterly from the Earth. What a sad strange and beautiful thing.

One of the things that's scary about having kids is that you have this new form of love that's so strong and powerful, and yet you know that you have this intense love for this creature that is mortal, you know, and will face the same difficulties that you face, and that, you know, they'll lose people like Neal. They'll lose me. And it's a strange thing. It's like, I think after having our first kid, after having our second kid, I remember talking to my wife and being like, “What is this strange thing we're doing?” Like, “We're not doing it for them. We're not having kids to benefit the kids.” You know, “I guess we're doing it for us.” And you realize, “Oh my God, you're just running on instinct,” you know, you're just kind of, you're kind of just doing what humans have always done. So yeah, I guess that's what it brings to mind. It fit into that idea that I wanted to do something stripped down and that song just seemed to need it, you know, I definitely felt pressure that I needed to write this about something that to me was profound. So I really dug to figure out what I was going to write about lyrically. Yeah and so it just needed to be plain and honest and real. And that's always a challenge, man, God, you know? But it's one of those songs, like, what if I was just singing about some hot chick or something? (laughs). It just wouldn't, it's like, it wouldn't work. Yeah, that's generally what I do is like, you know, the music is written first and I have a melody in my head and everything. And then I'm just kind of like, “What is this about?” Like, “What sort of subject matter would be appropriate to fit with this music?” So that's what that wanted. It wanted something that felt right, universal and something kind of, I guess, somber.

I had recorded the main guitar thing so we showed up with that and I had the vocals already on there. So it was really, you know, Dave adding that strange percussion thing and Marty writing and recording that synth thing, which was like a Casio keyboard. You know, it was a really cheap little toy sort of keyboard. It works so well, yeah. He's great. He's a great person to collaborate with, Marty Crandall. And when Dave, Dave was so proud because that's him on the, on probably that Nord or something, he found some strange percussion thing. It's kind of a heartbeat. You know, I think it's that it's like the embryonic heart. In my mind, that's what we were going for. Yeah. I love that type of stuff. It's fun. Like, you know, on a song like that. Yeah you can kind of be cinematic and do weird atmospheric things like sort of sound effects and stuff. I love to have that final song on an album. I mean, I know that people don't really listen to records anymore, but I think that there are a few records from my youth that, you know, would have a good final song that would kind of leave you, I don't know what, send you off gently or something. So I always try to do that.

I remember being pleased and just feeling relief (laughs), a lot of relief that, you know, “Oh my God, it's done, did it.” It was recorded or mixed in Seattle, these final stages, which was like, God, I think it feels like it was two weeks. I don't know if it was that long, but it felt like two weeks. And it was in Seattle so you know, Stuart (Meyer) from Sub Pop and Megan (Jasper) could come over. Yeah so they were a part of the project too, you know, which was cool. So it was like, when it was done, I knew that they knew what was happening and they approved of it, you know. And so that just felt great. I really wanted to please Sub Pop. I wanted them to feel like they did not make a mistake by signing me. I just wanted to do a good job for them, I wanted to impress them, I was honored that they had signed me. And they are all such charming people, you know, that I just really wanted to impress them. So they were very much a part of, you know, the listening in and even Stuart having ideas about the mix and stuff like that. You know, it's so cool to have somebody who's at the label who's so into your music that he totally knows each song inside and out and is thinking, “Okay, dude. And then we go, ‘Kissing the Lipless,’ right into ‘Mine's Not a High Horse,’” So, you know, they're all enthusiastic about it. And then he just came up with it. I think it's a great, great track listing. And so it was, it was really cool. 

Touring for this was a whole new thing for us. We had put out a second record and it was received pretty well. I didn't read a lot of the reviews or any of that stuff, but the audiences were there. We were growing. We were bigger now, you know, on this second tour cycle. It was a really neat time and it was during this period that I met my wife. And so a lot of things changed for me and things were really looking up at this time. And then, so this comes out in 2003. And then in 2004, I think it was somewhere in 2004, that movie comes out, the Garden State movie comes out. And so we were done. We had just finished touring for Chutes Too Narrow and, you know, we were exhausted. We wanted to go home and just, “Oh great, it was great fun and we're done.” And then the movie comes out and all of a sudden there's this huge new interest in The Shins. And not only that, the soundtrack for that movie sold like hotcakes. They sold like a million. It went platinum. It was crazy. So, we had to go out on tour again, but this time we were able to afford having a proper bus. So instead of us driving in our van, we had a proper bus. So that was, yeah, this is a, I guess the release of this record marks a bunch of big changes that happened in my life. So Brian Burton, my partner in Broken Bells, the first record he heard of the Shins was Chutes Too Narrow. And that I think is what drew him, or that was the impetus for him to come and seek me out in Denmark where we were playing a show shortly after this came out. And that's when our friendship began. The other thing that's funny is, Courtney (Taylor-Taylor) from the Dandy Warhols, he speaks very frankly often. At about this time, I met him too, and he said, “How does it feel that your second record is the best record you'll ever write? That you'll never do it better than that.” So he loved it. I always felt like I had done it under very stressful time, and I think in a way it kind of tainted my appreciation of the record, because I was so stressed out and I just don't know why, but I just worried that maybe I hadn't gone over it with enough of a fine tooth comb. But that was my intention to begin with anyway, was to just kind of do it in a straightforward way. And so we accomplished that, but I'm pleased now that people do love the record. It was a record I worked really hard on and, you know, I guess sank a lot of my hopes and dreams on and it turned out pretty good. So it was really, I think, I guess, coming out with Chutes Too Narrow was the beginning of me actually being a proper songwriter.

Outro: 

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about The Shins. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Chutes Too Narrow. Instrumental music by Diners. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

"Kissing the Lipless"

"Mine's Not a High Horse"

“So Says I”

“Young Pilgrims”

“Saint Simon”

“Fighting in a Sack”

“Pink Bullets”

“Turn a Square”

“Gone for Good”

“Those to Come”

All songs written by James Mercer, Lettuce Flavored (BMI)

Marty Crandall - keys

Dave Hernandez - bass, guitars

James Mercer - vocals, guitars, harmonica

Jesse Sandoval - drums

with additional musicians:

Annemarie Ruljancich - violin on “Saint Simon”

Kevin Suggs - pedal steel on “Gone for Good”

© ℗ 2003 Sub Pop Records

Recorded in James’ Basement, Portland, OR and Avast! Studio, Seattle, WA June-Jully 2003.

Produced by The Shins and Phil Ek.

Mixed by Phil Ek at Avast! Studio, Seattle, WA

Mastered by Emily Lazar at The Lodge, NYC.

2023 Remaster by Adam Ayan

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Domino” by Diners from the album, DOMINO

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam