For one thing, they sold out years ago. "New Slang," that song that is going to change your life, was used in a McDonald's commercial before anybody knew who they were.

Not that it matters -- "New Slang" is still an excellent song (not life-changing, but excellent), and they just put out the best record they've ever made, which is no small accomplishment after "Oh! Inverted World" and "Chutes Too Narrow," two of the frankly best albums of this decade.

That said, I do think a lot of what's been written and said about the two previous Shins albums is pretty overly hyperbolic. They're good, but the first one suffered from inescapable indie angst syndrome, and the second one fell apart on about a quarter of the tracks (though the other 3/4 is so strong a lot of people didn't seem to notice).

Which is probably why people have been so down on this one -- you hear enough about how much a band is blowing up the world with its brilliance and anything short of an album that melts your face off seems like a disappointment. And while "Wincing" doesn't melt one's face off, it does create a slight burning sensation that's pretty damn pleasurable.

Like their indie jangle-pop bretheren The New Pornographers, The Shins seem to have figured out a way to put their pretty divergent senses of sound together into one album on their third release. Where "Inverted" was all fuzzy greys and "Chutes" was mostly bright yellows, "Wincing" finds a way to use a whole palette and create something more than just a solid color.

To be a little less obtuse about it, the album jumps around in terms of how it sounds -- from indie-angsty to bright jangle pop to subdued introspection to experimental hip-hop loop craziness. Some have said it seems like a safe bet, like any old Shins album. But I feel like it's the exact opposite. It took some balls to make this record.

Yes, some songs are totally Shinsy. Like the best song on the album, "Australia." It's so damn catchy and upbeat that it wouldn't have been terribly out of place on "Chutes." (What can I say, I'm a sucker for banjo in pop songs.) But consider the second-best song, the totally "where the hell did that come from" "Sea Legs," which is all bass and drums and hand claps. And the laudable single, "Phantom Limb," is like the love child of their last two albums -- a pretty amazing synthesis of glowy pop and glowery indie.

Of course what they're doing is going to sound at least a little like what they did before. It's the same band, for Christ's sake. So the very fact that they didn't try to make The Great American Record or Chutes II is pretty damn commendable. They just made an awesome Shins record, that moves them beyond what they've done before, but doesn't try to jump them into the Great Band category.

Which kind of is what makes them a great band. A.

Additional:

Now that I've mentioned that movie, I kind of need to post this, a much improved version of the scene that had "New Slang" in it:

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