Album Articulation #4: Chutes too Narrow by The Shins

Winding chutes tell a contemplative story with complex poetic musings.

But Mercy's eyes are blue when she places them in front of you
Nothing holds a Roman candle to the solemn warmth you feel inside
There's no measuring of, nothing else is love

Saint Simon - The Shins

The Shin’s Chutes Too Narrow album art by Jessie LeDoux

Articulation #4

Artist: The Shins
Album: Chutes Too Narrow
Released: October 21, 2003
Genre: Indie Rock

Notable Songs

• So Says I
  The brutal truth of capitalism and communism angrily and poetically thrashed out.

• Saint Simon
  Absolutely beautiful mini-trip into questions that cannot be answered, and finding that sometimes ignorance is bliss.

• Gone for Good
  Admitting fault and knowing you are the problem is only half the battle.

Personal Note

On one of my first computers I found music preloaded into the Windows Media Player. One of these songs was “Saint Simon” by The Shins. I remember the visceral reaction I had to this strangely cool, flowing, and poetic auditory experience. For little me, still in the process of discovering more than just the 70s and 80s of my parent’s collection, this was explosive. Especially the break to “…but Mercy’s eyes are blue…” being almost classical in nature with supporting strings gave me a new lullaby to sing me to sleep and deep lyrics to shape my outlook on life. And in the early age of YouTube, finding the music video made with the band surrounded by thousands and thousands of migrating butterflies—this song still imbues a sense of contemplative wonder and magic every time I listen to it.

Vibes

• Lyric-first with such depth and complexity. No surface level thoughts, you have to sit and think about them to get to the true meaning. Even more so the lyrics can be isolated as poetry, they are art in themselves.

• The instruments leave space for these words, nothing too muffling, gritty, unbalanced, or extreme.

• Always energy in every song, they’re always pushing forward to the end with a constant drive in guitars, giving a feeling of restlessness.

• Slightly feels like folk with the use of twangy guitars, slide guitars, banjo-like effects, and tight harmonies.

• The reverb on the voice at times gives a more expansive feel.

• The album was recorded in a basement and you feel the rawness in some of the tracks.

• Self-deprecation and deep contemplations reflect in floaty, dreamy, repeating guitar licks and easy to listen, familiar chords.

• Masters at simple story telling with the shifts in bridges or choruses, especially in Kissing the Lipless with raw, scream-y lyrics.

• Pessimistic outlooks that feel cathartic to contemplate and have reflected in gritty guitars and close harmonies.

• “Chutes too narrow”—meaning you are barely able to get out of difficulties you get yourself in, feeling trapped and suffocating in depression, wrapped in negativity, but you try try try to escape.

Album Cover Connections

• Album artist Le Douxville (Jesse LeDoux) on the album art: "[Chutes Too Narrow is] filled with witty, idiosyncratic pop music. To match that, the artwork is playful and boundless. The CD contains a die-cut booklet, enabling the viewer to see and feel dimensionality when the booklet is folded. The LP has a gatefold jacket with white vinyl. 2005 Grammy nominee for Best Art Direction."

• At first glance seems sonorous, but when looking into it feels chaotic.

• Different textures all over give depth to the foreground, mountains, and background.

• Use of organic shapes with no hard edges feels flowing and messy.

• The lyrics overlaid all over solidify their importance to the album.

• The radio tower and eye from a submarine scope gives the feeling of being watched, or trying to spread message across the world, wanting to be discovered.

• Or is the eye the singer himself looking out, feeling as the outsider and depressed, trying to look for what can keep him afloat?

• Ice cubes in the water is reflected in a few songs; he is watching them melt, unable to control their degradation into liquid. Or them melting means nothing, it itself is just water going into water, and once it's gone it won't be remembered.

• A rainbow hidden behind a forest shows the light beyond the dark, a glimmer of hope. The array of chopped trees illustrated the effort to get to that hope.

• The chutes carry nothing with no destination, into bee-hive house, ocean, under the land, messy, sprawling in different directions like how many experience life.

• Winding, multiple chutes show us that many people go through chutes too narrow and suffer the same.

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