I have enjoyed The Shins' music for a few years now. I checked out their first two albums because they fit into the general mould of harmonic pop that I enjoy. However, it was never a "Garden State" situation where The Shins were going to "change my life," especially with the first two albums which I find a little too low key despite their pleasant twistedness (The Posies do that better anyway-and I remember an interview where one of the Posies complains that their moment never quite came but yet The Shins broke out a few years later). Anyway, I enjoy their third album "Wincing the Night Away" more because it is a departure from that style, but even now I still haven't spent that much time on it.
But while sitting in heavy traffic about a year ago I was listening to the radio (to give my wife a brief respite from a continual stream of Posies, Mountain Goats, New Pornographers, Neko Case, etc.) and I heard a really catchy song that sounded like The Shins. I remembered enough of the lyrics to look it up later and it turned out to be "Name For You" off of their latest album, "Heartworms" (it may not have even been released by that point). I didn't really get into the album until the end of the summer, but it really took off for me in the fall and there was a period when it was on my playlist practically nonstop. "Painting a Hole" is wacky and amazing with some serious groove, "Cherry Hearts" is so great to sing along with (if no one else has to hear me); there are a ton of stand-outs.
But "Port of Morrow," well, I gave it enough of a cursory listen to pick out the highlights like "Simple Song," but it wasn't until that winter drive that I started to get into it. It too took hold, especially "Its Only Life," "No Way Down," and "40 Mark Strasse," but "Simple Song" above all.
In some respects I have laden this post with biographical information because the song is in many respects as simple as its title suggests (although I actually think the biographical part is good to have because I don't add bands to my musical "inner circle" all that often so it is worth documenting). The sentiment is laid out as clearly as the thesis statement in a high school essay:
"This is just a simple song, to say what you done
I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The song is about the love and gratitude that the singer feels for his beloved and the way that she, among other things, helped him conquer his fears and turn his life in a positive direction.
But I hesitate to say that things are really as simple as all that. Most songs are susceptible to being reduced to a quick description (hint: you've got a way better than 50/50 chance if you say "love" and don't specify whether the love goes well or not) without their subject matter being at all simple (to say nothing of their specific treatment of that subject matter).
The song actually takes a fairly unusual perspective in presenting a retrospective view of a happy, successful love. This isn't a song about wanting someone out of reach, or trying to convince someone to get with you, or a love gone wrong, or even just how wonderful the beloved is. It's close the that last one, but the difference is that many songs about the beloved just focus on the object, the beloved, whereas this one is about how the beloved changed and improved the singer's life, hence those lines about how "I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The lines that come next are where things get complicated (and interesting). They go as follows:
"You sure must be strong,
When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun"
Now, I think the speaker is here praising the beloved (the "you") for being strong, and by virtue of that strength, for making the speaker "feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun." The "you feel" in this line is thus not a feeling the beloved feels, but a feeling that the beloved causes in others. This second "you" thus occupies a complicated position, where it treats the beloved as an object, but as an active rather than merely passive one. The "you" in "when you feel" has a similar function as the "you" in "to say what you done" earlier in the song.
It's a subtle point, and maybe I'm making too much out of it, but it seems to me that this construction is one way to elevate the "beloved" beyond the passivity usually designated by the term in order to give her strength and influence its due. As an addendum to this point, I just want to point out how enjoyable the pick-up in tempo is after he sing "being warmed by the sun," it's a simple, triumphant kind of pleasure. The strident strumming (along with the swirling synth) just crashes over the listener like the waves of a sin-warmed ocean.
But in thinking about all of this I find myself wondering about the "you" in the chorus:
"I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone
Don't go thinking you gotta be tough and be/bleed/play/plea (?) like a stone
Could be there's nothing else in lives so critical
As this little home."
I think that the "you" in the first two lines of the chorus is a rhetorical "you," rather than the beloved. I say this partly because of the "strength" of the beloved, she does not seem to be in any danger from going it alone or trying to put on a tough face. I also say it because the lead-in "I know" seems to signal a recounting of general advice rather than some kind of direct description, plus, the phrases themselves are curiously generic ("go it alone," "gotta be tough"). If anything, the chorus sounds like the speaker recounting advice he has received (perhaps from the beloved) and that he has had to learn to put into practice. Such a shift wouldn't be that unusual because the chorus is, at least to an extent, a separate part of the song, so it can play that dramatic role.
And speaking of drama, I would alike to point out the beautiful final lyrics of the song:
"Remember walking a mile to your house
Aglow in the dark
I made a fumbling play for your heart
And the ax drove the spark
You wore a charm on the chain that I stole special for you
Love's such a delicate thing that we do
With nothing to prove
Which I never knew
I do like the phrase "aglow in the dark," it is a romantic image that taps into the sun imagery and also leads into the clever bit about the ax (the ax image captures the endearing inexperience -"a fumbling play"- of the speaker, since it is only an ax that misses its target that causes a spark). But is the (nearly) final line, "Love's such a delicate thing that we do" that really resonates. Love is something active and shared ("something we do"), and like the complicated positioning of the"you" in this song, it is sometimes very subtle and delicate. So much for a simple song.
