James Mercer Sort Quotations

Lyrically, I think I'm frustrated with this whole process of trying to figure out what I believe about the world and life. I don't like to adopt a sort of guiding philosophy.

My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff.

I tend to write a pretty half and half split of, like, slow, morose things and then sort of more upbeat stuff.

When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.

I know that there are a lot of sort of silly things that one thinks as a music listener about bands. I am a fan of many bands.

I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That's something that I do habitually.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.