For most visitors, Las Vegas conjures up images of blackjack, cocktails and flying aerialists. For James Mercer, it will always be associated with … his parents?
“They got married in Vegas at one of those little chapels over by the Stratosphere,” he explains in a phone interview with the Weekly. “My parents love Vegas and always have, so when we play there, they make the drive from Albuquerque and it’s a big family get-together.”
James Mercer’s parents in front of Circus Circus in 1969
Those family reunions have been relatively frequent here through the years. Mercer and his indie-pop band, The Shins, have played Vegas close to 10 times since 2003, beginning with a slot opening for Modest Mouse at House of Blues in 2003 and continuing with appearances at the Halloween-themed Vegoose festival in 2005 and ’07 (the former swigging cans of Budweiser while dressed as nuns), at the Cosmopolitan’s Boulevard Pool, at Downtown fest Life Is Beautiful and beyond.
On July 22, The Shins will return to town for the first time since 2017 with a concert at the Theater at Virgin—one that will begin with a full presentation of 2001 debut album Oh, Inverted World.
The tour, celebrating the 21st anniversary of that indie touchstone, kicked off July 12 at the Warfield in San Francisco—and the night caught Mercer a bit off guard. “I had a surprisingly emotional response to the crowd there. They were really ebullient,” he says. “It felt like a long time coming, not only with the preparation for this tour, but the whole 20 years of my life that has been devoted to this music.”
Oh, Inverted World—including “Caring Is Creepy” and “New Slang,” both of which were featured in the 2004 film Garden State and on its platinum-certified soundtrack (“It’ll change your life,” Natalie Portman’s character famously said of “New Slang”)—will forever epitomize a wave that saw underground music reach new listeners and, ultimately, mainstream charts. And for Mercer, playing those 11 songs in succession has brought quite a rush of personal memories from the days when he wrote them.The undeniably catchy, wistful-yet-uplifting tunes on
“[That album] summed up a lot of the feelings I had as my 20s were coming to a close and I didn’t really have my life figured out,” the 51-year-old Mercer says. “I had a job I didn’t like, [and] I was in a relationship I knew was probably going to end at some point, so everything seemed up in the air for me at that time, which is kind of a nice feeling in a strange way but also scary.”
Oh, Inverted World, released on Seattle’s iconic Sub Pop Records, went on to sell more than half a million copies, “but before you’re signed, when you’re working on music, it doesn’t sound good on paper,” Mercer recalls. “I think my parents were getting a bit frustrated with me that I had dropped out of college and was doing this music thing. You know, it just seemed ridiculous.”
In May, The Shins participated in Just Like Heaven, a California festival that gathered acts from the early 2000s: Interpol, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Wolf Parade and more. And while Mercer says he feels a certain kinship with some of those bands—especially Modest Mouse, “the ones who really got us our big break”—these days his listening habits lean elsewhere.
“Nowadays, it’s kind of dictated by the kids. Fortunately, my eldest daughter has really good taste in music, and my wife has playlists. I have no playlists; I just listen to the stuff my wife and kids listen to,” he says. “There’s a lot of Lana Del Rey in the house, Taylor Swift, Angel Olsen—a lot of lady singers, which is my favorite anyway.”
Mercer has also been at work on a new album from Broken Bells, the project that pairs him with Brian Burton, better known as producer Danger Mouse. “Brian and I both feel like it’s the best thing we’ve done together, for sure,” he says of third Broken Bells LP Into the Blue, the duo’s first since 2014, due out later this year.
In the meantime Mercer will continue looking back, on the album that changed his life. “I think that’s part of why I was so emotional in San Francisco, because I was in a very different place when this record came out,” he says. “Now I’ve got three children and a wonderful wife. It’s just a very different life I’m living now.”
THE SHINS with Joseph. July 22, 7 p.m., $45+. The Theater at Virgin, axs.com.
