The Shins dropped this 'Simple Song' upon their SoundCloud only yesterday, and already it seems to have set the blogosphere alight, the fires of their pop-infused rock sensibilities spreading with uncontrollable fervour! I'm a big fan of The Shins. 'Wincing the Night Away' is a stable record in my life so discovering a new number made for anticipation on a grand scale. However, initially I was not as impressed with this as I knew I should have been. My sudden disappointment with a band I've always loved ushered in a queue of repeats, and after a few I knew the answer lay with the lyricism. From interesting lines like "Faced with the android's conundrum / I felt like I should just cry", we're now being dealt such gems as "And where they did wrong / you sure must be strong", and rhyming 'rough' with 'tough'. It does have its nice moments but overall I wasn't drawn into 'Simple Song' as much as I was with the complexities of songs like 'Australia' or 'Pam Berry'. Everything just seems laid out on the surface without me needing to dig very far. But hey, with a title like 'Simple Song' I don't really know what I was expecting. Listen to all four minutes of said number up above!
