The Shins

Since 1996 · United States

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Oh, Inverted World (2001)

Oh, Inverted World wraps warm, hook-driven melodies in lo-fi-tinged, reverb-heavy production that never quite lets the songs sound as polished as they are. "New Slang" rides a simple acoustic-guitar figure and James Mercer's plaintive vocal into one of the most quietly memorable choruses of the era, its melancholy never tipping into melodrama. The album's unhurried, melody-first approach set it apart from the more aggressive indie rock surrounding it at the time. It became one of the most widely heard indie pop records of the decade, its influence audible in a whole wave of bands that followed.

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The Shins

Oh, Inverted World · 2001

The Shins formed around singer-songwriter James Mercer, who built the band's early sound out of jangling, reverb-drenched guitars and melodies indebted to the classic pop he grew up on, later citing Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cure, and the Smiths as the bands that most shaped him as a teenager. Mercer's affinity for the Elephant 6 collective's psychedelic pop scene, and specifically Olivia Tremor Control's experimental streak, placed the band in conversation with a wider underground of melody-focused, studio-adventurous indie pop even though the Shins emerged from a different geographic scene entirely.

Oh, Inverted World (2001) established the template Mercer would return to across the band's catalog — warm, hook-driven songwriting wrapped in lo-fi-tinged production — and its slow-building word-of-mouth success, aided considerably by its prominent use in film, made it one of the most widely heard indie pop records of the early 2000s. The album's combination of melodic generosity and understated production became a genuine influence on the wave of indie pop that followed it later in the decade.