Artist: The Shins
Album: Chutes Too Narrow
At 162 albums into this journey, I find myself very glad that I have been using tags to keep track of what albums I have and have not done. Last night I found myself clamoring for something that I haven’t used yet, and was shocked to see that I have not yet covered this album, as it is one of my more recent favorites.
I believe that there were a few times in the beginning of the year that I wanted to cover this album, but decided against it because in my mind this is a summertime album, and I wanted to wait until it was warmer and I could drive around blasting this CD with the windows down and the volume up. While running errands today, this is exactly what I did.
I find it hard to find fault with this album. From the handclaps at the beginning of kissing the lipless to the last soothing notes and the lyrical imagery of those to come, this album is flawless. Not only do I believe it to be perfect musically, but it holds some of my favorite lyrics of the last ten years. “you want to jump and dance/but you sat on your hands/and lost your only chance” gets me every time I hear it, and usually results in my rewinding to hear it again. Actually, all of the lyrics in the song gone for good are pretty poignant. This is another one of those times where I question if you have ever heard this song, and when you shake your head no at the computer screen, I implore you to stop what you are doing and check it out…and then so helpfully provide you with a link to a video on YouTube so that you might be able to hear the song without navigating away from my happy little blog.
I cant think of any specific moments involving this album that I can share with you. I know that I had a very hard time finding the Cd, and even worse of a time finding the vinyl. I remember finally buying the record one night on South Street at Repo Records (God, I miss having the cash to go visit that place) and still having it in my car the next day when I went to work (or I worked that night after a concert…that happened a lot more than I care to remember) so I was able to show it off to a girl I worked with who had almost as kick-ass a taste in music as I do. I remember getting a text message from her some time later, after she had screwed up and blamed me, in which she told me that I was a piece of shit for buying records and that I was the reason my family was falling apart. My family’s demise was news to me, and I never knew that buying records deemed someone a lousy person, but there you have it. Funny…I still have that record but I don’t still have the friend. Just one more reason, I guess, that I prefer music to people.
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