The Shins Break Up? Well, Kinda…-- Local Cut

The Shins Break Up? Well, Kinda…

May 6th, 2009 [7:30PM] Posted by: Michael Mannheimer | 6 COMMENTS

We’ve heard rumors of this for almost a year now (cough—Baumgarten—cough), and today the official announcement came from Pitchfork: the Shins are breaking up. Okay, just kidding! Sorta…the Shins as we’ve known them for, oh, the past eight years, are now an entirely different beast.

According to an interview with Amy Phillips, two of the band’s key players and founding members—keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval—are out of the group and have been replaced by Ron Lewis (Grand Archives) and Modest Mouse auxillary drummer Joe Plummer (no, not that one). So when the Shins take the stage tonight and tomorrow at the Crystal Ballroom, both will be absent. And that’s going for the immediate future—and the next Shins record. Which is interesting, because our understanding is that Mercer was already well into recording an album with his old squad (something not mentioned in the Pitchfork interview).

Now, I’ve never met Mercer before, but this all seems a little weird to me. Didn’t he just essentially fire half of his band? And keep the old name for what now amounts to his solo project? It’s not like Crandall and Sandoval were hired hands; both have played with Mercer since at least 1997, when all three were living in New Mexico and playing in the band Flake (and, according to Wikipedia, since possibly 1992). In the interview Mercer never says the word “fire,” but that seems to be really what’s happening here—you just don’t quit the Shins. Here’s Mercer’s explanation from the interview:

I started to have production ideas that I wanted to do that basically required some other people. It’s mainly about that. It’s an aesthetic decision. It’s kind of hard to talk abut stuff like that, isn’t it? Because I don’t want to bum anybody out. I’m on good terms with those guys, I hope to maintain that.

Bands change members all the time, so this is nothing new. But all this going down without much notice makes it seem like the Shins (or Shin, anyway) are trying to sweep it under the rug. After all, most fans found out about the lineup change after the Seattle show on Monday. Though ex-WW Music Editor and current Sound Magazine Editor Mark Baumgarten investigated the story a year ago, when Crandall denied the rumor.

Mercer is currently working on quite a few other projects, including a big still-unconfirmed collaboration with a big name producer in Los Angeles and a local indie film with former Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein.

Conspiracy theories, out with you! Let’s go!

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