Advertising card titled "American Family" by James S. Kirk & Co., c. 1900
Welcome to an "All Twee All the Time" edition of Title Fight. In one corner we have Brighton, UK's Brighter, and in the other we have the Shins of Portland, OR (formerly of Albuquerque). Both of these tracks are rarities of sorts - Brighter's "Nothing At All" is from a set of four songs recorded by the band in June of 1990, just a couple months before they assembled their only big release, the Laurel mini-LP. I'm not sure why these songs were never released by the band (until Matinee Records put together the Out to Sea compilation) - they're as good as anything the band recorded. I'm guessing they were supposed to go on a single that ended up being scuppered (as the English say). This track's good points: a nice keyboard part under the standard twee-pop guitar jangle, plenty of tambourine, and a nice line in the chorus, "I think I'm on the shelf again." The song's weakness is definitely in the incredibly flimsy-sounding lead vocal.
The Shins' "Nothing At All" was a b-side to their "Phantom Limb" single, and it's a solid track that would have strengthened the underwhelming Wincing the Night Away album. The song's got some great synth riffs and an incredibly catchy sing-song melody, and the arrangement steadily adds elements as it goes, including handclaps, which are always nice. The downside to this song is that it sounds like it was recorded by James Mercer without any help from his fellow Shins. This wouldn't be a problem except that it brings to mind how Mercer unceremoniously dropped his old Albuquerque friends from the band last year - I have lots of fond memories of seeing that lineup in their early days, going all the way back to their opening slot on Modest Mouse's 2000 tour.
I couldn't live with myself if I gave Mercer the victory, even though I like that song a lot, so I'm giving the win to the one with the out-of-tune vocals. Yay!
Winner: BRIGHTER
"Nothing At All" by Brighter
"Nothing At All" by the Shins
2 comments:
love your blog. do you have a podcast by any chance?
Sorry, no podcast. I don't really have the right mindset (or voice) for radio - I found this out over the course of my six-month stint as a late-night radio DJ in the mid-90s.
Thanks for the compliments,though!
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