Ship of Shins (Mercer, top right)

Brian Tamborello

Shins fans have been waiting. And waiting. For Wincing The Night Away (Sub Pop), the follow-up full-length to the band's crisp and snappy 2004 break-out Chutes Too Narrow. Wincing, whose title refers to singer/ guitarist/ songwriter James Mercer's at-times crippling insomnia, brings the band back in a way to the more sonically experimental sound of its debut, Oh, Inverted World, while taking the sound to an even gauzier netherworld, nestled somewhere between the conscious and subconscious. I caught up with Mercer (whose band is playing tonight at the Electric Factory ) on the phone last month while he was on the tour bus in Denver where the band was playing the Fillmore and the weather was "cold and bright."

City Paper: There seems to be running through the new record a theme of identity, and more specifically, changing one's identity, whether it be the idea of "a thousand different versions of yourself" ("Sleeping Lessons") or the more macabre idea of carving one's face off ("A Comet Appears"). How much, in a general sense, do you see songwriting and the making of a record as a chance for you to recreate yourself.

James Mercer: I guess, for some reason during this process I started to realize how much you can contrive about your own personality. And how that's sort of unfair, for people to base their opinions of me on the songs that I write. It's like, I have an advantage because I get to contrive everything. But also I think, on the other side of things, when you try and really be honest... lyrically I tend to delve pretty deeply into my own psyche. Because I need something to really feel, I need to be really feeling something for me to be doing my best writing. And sometimes there is this real thing of cutting yourself up and finding these... getting into all of the different sort of directions that you're pulled in as a person.

CP: When you're done with an album, how wary are you when you're writing songs of what's coming out. Do you sometimes take a step back and say, "Holy shit. That's what I was going through?" Or is it more of a conscious process.

JM: You're really really in it when you're writing. Sometimes I find myself looking back on stuff I've written and I feel like, "Oh god, it's too much." For me to try to ride this balance between using actual real shit from my life to fuel my creativity and trying not to expose myself too much. Because you lose the universality of a lot of things, and you also embarrass yourself. And it's kind of a tough game sometimes of trying to be honest and not be over-exposed.

CP: Given the heights the band has reached in the last few years, was there even more of an impetus for you to reinvent the band's sound?

JM: Well, I definitely wanted to. Early on I felt that I'd like to try some new stuff. I had messed around and experimented with some ideas on Oh, Inverted World, and I really enjoyed that process. I also feel that I'm good at... I don't have a tendency to ruin songs by fucking with them too long. And so wanted to do that again. I wanted to experiment a lot. I had also done a record that was very stripped down and dry, that would be Chutes Too Narrow, because I had wanted to make sure I could do a record that really relied on the songs and not on production tricks. And so I knew it was time for me to get back into the studio again and have fun.

CP: You've said that the new album is inspired by your bouts with insomnia. How long have you suffered from insomnia and how does it manifest itself?

JM: I think that I really started having trouble sleeping in my mid 20s. And it's just as soon as I started having to be an adult. I started stressing about things. It pretty quickly became something that would mess with my sleeping habits and I would sit... I say, Wincing The Night Away, and often, literally, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about, I don't know why, but my mind will think about the most stressful things and kind of exaggerate them into something that's almost impossible to ever overcome. So it's like oftentimes I'll find myself thinking about things that I did wrong. Like, "Oh shit, I should have handled that better," or "I made that person feel bad," or "I shouldn't have..." and duh-duh-duh, "I disappointed this or that person." Or just business things. A lot of it is just that I'm in a position of responsibility and a position of power, and you need to be very careful about the decisions you make, they affect a lot of other people. That's just a new thing for me.

CP: Because of the band's success?

JM: Yeah. Exactly. I'm sort of leading this business.

CP: How does it manifest itself in your songwriting? Will you sometimes just take this wakefulness and write songs?

JM: A lot of this turns into time for me to work on lyrics. I took advantage of the situation because I began realizing, "I'm up at four in the morning all the time, working, and living in this twilight all the time." And I remember having conversations with my wife about the moon and how kind of beautiful in a dark way evening is. It became at least a theme, and a direction for me to take the whole record.

CP: The album does have a bit of a waking dream quality. Is Wincing The Night Away, with its contemplative stretches interspersed with frenetic bursts, the soundtrack to an unquiet mind?

JM: Yeah, that's probably pretty close.

Brian Tamborello

CP: "Sleeping Lessons" starts out with this really soothing marimba-sounding passage. Do you write songs with a lullaby intention?

JM: Well this one, this one became that sort of a thing. That song, "Sleeping Lessons," I was going to produce it as, have you ever heard Gary U.S. Bonds? He's got some great hits recorded with two mics. Sounds like you're kind of walking into a juke joint - there's a party going on - and I sort of wanted to do that and have it like you came across this juke joint and these guys were playing that riff, that major seventh riff, that weird dissonant but vaguely blues-ish run, and so I turned that into something otherworldly, just kind of a contextual thing production-wise. And I struggled with that for a while, I never really could get it to work. So what I did was I started it out otherworldly and very electronic and futuristic and dreamy and so on. And that's supposed to be where you're lulled into sleep and then a dream starts when we all kick in because that's what your brain activity does when you start dreaming. And then the rest of the record would be these episodes, it would be dreams. And then at the end, "A Comet Appears," dawn has now approached, birds are now singing, and you're left with this silent thing and the comet appears and there's this dark realization at the end where you've been released into the daytime.

CP: Much has been said about the length of time that elapsed between Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away. And I know that appearing on the Garden State soundtrack had a lot to do with that. But what I'm wondering is how the Garden State thing erupting - basically reintroducing Oh, Inverted World to the world - at around the same that you have Chutes out, affected you as a songwriter. Here you are basically living with your entire recorded output all at once. Does that push you harder toward reinvention, toward coming up with something new?

JM: I don't know how much it really did affect me as a writer. I think that my process of writing is so separated from all of those influences. Largely I'm just sitting there with a guitar waiting for something to happen. And it's really so stream-of-consciousness at first. I do say songs are contrived, and they are, but there are those moments where the songs come from, the very start, the very root of it is utterly uncontrived. I don't have any control over it at all. I wish I was that smart. I wish I really understood that, that moment, that sort of early spark, because, it is such an important part of the whole process, but it's also scarily the most mysterious.

CP: Your brother, Robert Mercer, did the album art. How did that come about?

JM: He�s fantastic. He�s an artist in Seattle. He came to me early on while I was writing the songs and I tried to give him the themes, I talked to him about confusion and struggling with ethical issues, y�know, your place in the world and human condition topics, and he came up with these ideas of these tentacles, and he interpreted it into these perversions of normal sea creatures. Sort of like what you might see under a microscope and in a pond.

CP: Your songs about relationships - and I'm thinking specifically of "Turn On Me," but this has been recurring in your music - reveal a less-than-cheery outlook on love. Are you generally pessimistic about romance, or is it just that it's easier to write songs about bad relationships than the good ones?

JM: I was going through a relationship that had a lot of difficulty during this time. And that's why a lot of the lyrics end up being about the struggle, the things that can make relationships difficult. But "Sea Legs" is about my wife, about meeting her, about leaving that stuff behind. And having to make a move that you know is going to hurt somebody. But you know it's really toward love and getting your head in a peaceful place.

CP: You've also got this thing running through some of your songs about what we feel or don't feel. There's the line about "the android's conundrum" in "Australia" and then there's the concept of the "Phantom Limb," feeling something that's not really there. Is this an anti-emotion stance, or at least a statement that emotions are illusory?

JM: Yeah, I think that's partly true. I think I'm often astonished at how much I can take. And I think that emotions are, they're sometimes, what's the word when they escape you? I think it's often, y'know, the thing you most dread occurs, and you find yourself amazingly prepared for it in some way, and sort of left feeling numb by it, like, "There it is, it's done." I'd have to think a bit more about exactly where I was headed with that. I do have a feeling that I think that nowadays that people are pretty amazingly apathetic, and then strikingly fucking enthused about the strangest things. People will get so fucking worked up about something when it makes sense for them politically not to feel that way. And then something you ought to expect them to be indignant about they just won't mind at all. It's funny how we can pick and choose what we give a shit about. That's kind of an amazing thing to me. Tthe strange nature of your belief systems and how they affect every little ounce of your being.

CP: Do you have any specific examples of the things you've most dreaded?

JM: I've been lucky not to have horrible disappointment in my life, I haven't lost people who are very very close to me - knock on wood. But something comes down, a breakup or whatever, and you're just kind of struck by how strange, this thing that has been worrying me for so long, and now it's finally come, and that's it, there it is. It strangely frees you from things. Probably more importantly, in "Australia," I'm probably referring to how modern life... you go back and you think about that guy who was reporting while the Hindenburg blew up. The sound of his voice, you can tell how excruciating it was for him to see this. And what he was really feeling was a distinct and deep empathy for these people, who he knew must be burning to death. You can hear it in his voice. I think in general. humans today, or at least in the world that I live in, don't feel that. They don't have that sort of empathy anymore.

The Shins play Tue, March 13, 8 p.m., $27-$29, at the Electric Factory, 7th & Willow sts., 215-336-2000.