CD Reviews

The Shins

Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop)

Over 118,000 people can't be wrong, can they? That's how many people in one week either made the rare trek to a brick-and-mortar record shop or legally downloaded The Shins' third and recently released full-length, Wincing the Night Away, stunning proof of the Albuquerque, N.M., quartet's ever-growing buzz. Truth be told, awareness and hype has never been this band's problem; it seems every indie fan was crowing about Oh, Inverted World, The Shins' debut album. Clearly, it's worked for them -- and against them, for their music hasn't quite changed all our lives, to paraphrase that key line from Garden State. Hearing a new Shins record -- at least for this listener -- means waiting for those flashes of melodic brilliance that justify the band's word-of-mouth windfall. But on Wincing, those moments are few and far between.

Make no mistake about it: Songwriter James Mercer has a knack for writing well-crafted and often focused tunes just left-of-center enough to be distinct from those of his peers. But that doesn't mean all of them resonate. One main gripe is the nostalgia factor, most of Wincing sounding like a John Hughes soundtrack. Another is how, for every "Turn on Me" and "Phantom Limb" -- the album's standout tracks -- there's "Black Wave" and "Red Rabbits," synthy, mediocre numbers where The Shins sound more concerned with not sounding like The Shins than projecting any particular sentiment. Another example is the loopy throwback "Sea Legs," which could be a leftover from genre-tweaking U.K. act The Beta Band. Essentially, The Shins prioritized eccentricity this time around -- and ended up sacrificing much of their charm in the process.

MIKE PREVATT

The Good, the Bad, & the Queen

The Good, the Bad, & the Queen (Virgin)

Damon Albarn must have a serious case of inferiority complex, one easily traced to the lukewarm reception America gave the entire Blur catalog. Other than "Song 2," the infectious 1997 "woo-hoo" track, the remainder of the band's work was nonchalantly dismissed, much to his dismay and befuddlement. But then came Gorillaz and Albarn had the last laugh.

The laughs continue, but definitely not in the same vein. With his latest musical re-invention, Albarn joins forces with ex-members of The Clash, The Verve and Africa 70, as well as incorporating the production skills of Danger Mouse. Supergroup? Maybe. Most of the time, the sum exceeds the impact of the individual parts.

The Good, the Bad, & the Queen's overall impression settles somewhere between the historical musical landmarks expected from such accomplished musicians. At times understated Clash ("History Song"), at times less melancholic Verve ("Herculean), the entirety hints at much without entirely surrendering to nostalgia. "Kingdom of Doom," the album's first proper single, may fail to build to any transcendent heights, but it succeeds as a lullaby for troubled, politically charged times. And "80s Life" asks simple guitar strums and piano -- reminiscent of "Chopsticks," honestly -- to mask the impending doom in these same dangerous days.

The Good attempts something far more daring than simple musical self-referencing: Its members lean on their own individual history in order to rewrite the course for the present.

CAREY MURPHY

Young Love

Too Young to Fight It (Island)

Dan Keyes is a bit young and pretty for a midlife crisis. So the one-time Recover frontman and emo heartthrob's sudden conversion from post-hardcore nihilist to the dance-floor junkie Young Love can be the result of only a couple things: He's always had a serious case of boogie itch he just had to scratch, or dance club girls are way hotter than hoodie chicks.

If you believe Keyes, it's the former. "If you get the chance you must dance, dance, dance," he coos in his sweet and sincere tenor on synth-heavy "Find a New Way," one of the standouts on Young Love's debut, Too Young to Fight It. Keyes is hellbent on shaking his ass. In fact, he's reaching a new spiritual state. While pulsating new wave beats are occasionally cracked open by clanging guitars and Flock of Seagulls keyboard lines on opener "Discotech," he's finding his transcendental self: "You can't fake this/ you can take this/ you want to lose control." Much of the rest of the disc is Keyes trying to prove he is, in fact, losing control.

But the key to Too Young is how controlled it actually is. Whether intentionally or not, Keyes has made Young Love into a more jumpy version of The Postal Service. "Give Up" swells into well-planned hooks full of harmonies and interlocked guitars. The title track is a calculated mash-up of Gwen Stefani and Head Automatica. And "Closer to You," while formulaic, is so in that subtle and comforting way. The end result is an album that, while only a revelation for Keyes, is at least a guilt-free good time for us. (Young Love performs with Moros Eros 9 p.m. Feb. 10 at Beauty Bar.)

JEFF INMAN

Sondre Lerche and The Faces Down

Phantom Punch (Astralwerks)

Sondre Lerche has always crafted pop songs for another era -- melodies of fine silver filigree you expect to reel off a wax cylinder. People associate them with Burt Bacharach, but there's something much older in it. On Phantom Punch, he's adorned his latticework with bright bossa nova paper flowers and then gone a step further -- tossing up a lady's scarf, some black leather, whatever he found in his trunk that looked rock 'n' roll.

Some of the songs are elegant if wired yearnings over a long-distance relationship. Opener "Airport, Taxi, Reception" is standard, punchy Lerche, while "Tragic Mirror" is Dostoyevsky channeled through Thom Yorke. "The Tape" is, whoa ... a real frenetic rock song, albeit a gentle, sepia-toned one. See, Lerche's always had that air, as if the past stranded him here. Now, it's like he's finally deigned to pick up the idioms of today's youth, if in a measured manner. The resulting Tin Pan Alley-meets-"Penny Lane" effect is really refreshing, at a moment when even the best rock bands barge blindly down tired channels, substituting sonic density for songwriting.

Still, Lerche seems to feel himself a little above the modern rock medium he's chosen. His touch is sometimes too light. Belle and Sebastian producer Tony Hoffer puts bunny ears on Lerche's songs with tacked-on digital warbles and other distracting effects, so he can take some of the blame. Mainly, Phantom Punch is just the work of a man in rock but not of it. However, it is exactly Lerche's outsider perspective that recommends this delicately agitated album.

BEVERLY BRYAN