What are you doing NOT listening to the Shins?

What's that you say Danny? You're a hipster wannabe doucher?

Call me what you want, but all I know is that from the moment I heard the last 10 seconds of Phantom Limb on the radio last night I had to go home, turn my speakers up to...half volume, and shuffle my way through their whole collection. Come on, nobody blasts The Shins.

STILL, The Shins are one of those bands that truly take me back to a time long forgotten. Granted that time was like four years ago, but for a twenty year old, four years is a long time. I can barely remember what my life was like when I was sixteen. I'm pretty sure it was a lot like now come to think of it, but significantly more juvenile and naive. Sixteen was a time when alcohol was poison and my biggest concern was whether or not that hall pass I had forged 5 minutes prior to its examination by Carl would work. Listening my way through Chutes Too Narrow was like taking trip to the past, back to a time where my only responsibility between the end of school and the arrival home of my working parents was, in fact, listening my way trough Chutes Too Narrow. Their wide array of instrumentation combined with James Mercer's artsy-as-fuck yet soul-permeating lyrics is nothing short of a delight to bring back to your eardrums, if only just for a moment. A moment was all it took for me.


Admit it, they're not that bad.