The Shins: Oh, Inverted World!

admin on Jan 4th 2005

Bursting with colour, The Shins’ “Oh, Inverted World!” is filled with the same kind of mesmerising melodies, harmonies, and arrangements that Brian Wilson attained legendary status with. From the glowing “Caring is Creepy,” where each stretched syllable is a stone to step from, to the reverberating rock of “Girl on the Wing” and “Pressed in a Book,” chirping computer bleeps and transmission warblings infuse this decidedly vibrant effort at updating ’60s pop.

While “One by One All Day” feels like a veritable tunnel of energy, lit up with xylophones and thumping drums, its real charm lies in its end, when the song really begins to pulsate with life, as if hurtling down from space: this is The Shins’ playground in the stars, and as such, each listen gives you the pleasure of orbiting around it. “Weird Divide,” meanwhile, sounds like the product of a psychedelic barbershop quartet, stoned on a sunny afternoon, singing from the depths of a kaleidoscopic trance. Once the twirling “Know Your Onion!” launches things back into action, “Girl Inform Me” makes one realise that there are melodies to die for at every corner on this album, sung as if emanating from the Beach Boys’ spirits themselves: “But your lips when we speak / Are the valleys and peaks of a mountain range on fire.”

As the zig-zagging “oohs” of “New Slang” arrive, it becomes clearer still that “Oh, Inverted World!” pulls no punches in firmly establishing itself as an entirely gorgeous unity even by its half-way point. Following the sound of descending steps deep into a dripping cave, past stalagmites and stalactites, one will find the Shins’ next blissful harmony in “Your Algebra,” where a touch of the mystical could easily have you picturing the band members as various underground-dwelling creatures. In the song’s dying seconds, the sound of children giggling and pop-rocks sizzling does something to re-enforce the aforementioned idea of the album as a conceptual playground of sounds. The bohemian chords of the chilled, acoustic “The Past and Pending” sound somewhat reminiscent of “Mellow Gold”-era Beck, confirming, in its own way, that every touch here is a good one, as the album’s closer “sets light to the first fire of autumn.”

Clocking in at a modest 33 minutes, “Oh, Inverted World!” has a definite pleasing dynamic running through it, though it must be said that the echoing vocals may be left too low in the mix to be to everyone’s liking (the recording process was considerably lo-fi). Nevertheless, that shouldn’t be any reason to miss out on this symphony of digital trickery and streaming harmonies – sheer indie brilliance.