January 13, 2007

More On The Shins

Following up Joyful Girl's marvelous post below, I wanted to share a bit more on these indie rock darlings. They are blowing up, you see, and here's the goods so you can say you knew the band back when they were still (relatively) small:

The band will release their studio effort "Wincing the Night Away" on January 23 in the U.S. The first single, "Phantom Limb," is all over the Internets, but we'll get come back to that in a minute. First, be sure to check out one or several of The Shins' upcoming appearances and events over the next few weeks:

January 13: The Shins are the musical guests on Saturday Night Live! SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE! It's my dick, in a box!

January 18: Starting on this day, and running through Jan. 21st, you can stream Wincing the Night Away, in its entirety, on Myspace!

January 22: The Shins will be performing live at midnight at the Virgin Records in New York's Union Square. Buy a copy of the record at Virgin and you get in to see them play!

January 23: Not only does Wincing the Night Away come out on this day, but also the band will be playing on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman! DAVID LETTERMAN!

January 26: In the morning, The Shins will be playing on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. And, in the evening, at 8:00pm, they'll be playing a free in-store at the Amoeba Records in Hollywood.
Head on over to their site for a run of February tour dates.

Back to "Phantom Limb". Check out a video segment from ABC News with Charles Gibson about the fan shot video for the single. For those not in the know, here's the skinny on what that's all about:
The only Audience Created Concert Film featuring The Shins performing “Phantom Limb” – the first single from the band’s new album. Over 200 hundred video clips from fans cell phones and digital cameras were blended together to produce Part 1 of “All Eyes On The Shins!” – The Performance Of “Phantom Limb”.
Sweeeet. You can also take a look at the commercial video for the track, now playing at music video outlets everywhere. Or if you'd rather not deal with that, you can always Hype it. In fact you can hype a whole lot more than that, but you didn't hear that from me. Seriously though folks, you're going to be one of the many who proudly own this album and then boastfully informs your friends how you were on the beat while The Shins were still indie. Of course their fans probably hope they always will be, but as The Seattle Weekly points out, that can be difficult when prepping for possibly the biggest independent record release of all time. The article is a fine read for exploring that age-old conflict about independent vs. mainstream (a topic that has also been explored on AtD).

In a last droplet of Shins news, Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats is the newest member of the band. And word from The Shins camp is that he is "Great."

What indie bands are you listening to right now?

No comments: