The Shins are headed to Edmonton this week and they’re playing the Jube! That’s an amazing venue to see such an instrumentally talented band. Celebrate with a few fun factoids about the indie group!

 

1. They’ve never played Edmonton before. This Sunday marks their first ever appearance in the City of Champions!

2. Frontman James Mercer also founded Broken Bells. He and artist-producer Danger Mouse worked together in secret after meeting at a music festival in 2004. It took four years for them to actually begin making music, but by 2010 they released their self titled debut album. They performed at the Winspear in 2014.

3. They’re a 21 year old band. Mercer founded the band in 1996 as a side project to his full time band, Flake Music. He eventually left the band to fully commit to the Shins, where he ‘s now the sole original member.

4. According to Natalie Portman, “New Slang” will change your life. The song was used in Zach Braff’s 2004 movie “Garden State”. Natalie Portman introduced the song to his character – and to basically every music fan in the world.

 

 

5. Their songs are used everywhere – even in the Spongebob Movie. Loads of the Shin’s songs have been used in the media. In addition to a couple of movies, their songs have been featured in the television series The O.C. and a McDonald commercial that aired during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Mercer now regrets saying yes to the commercial though, saying “[It] happened so early on. I didn’t know that we would be around another year… and I was in debt and all that, blah-blah-blah. We got paid good money to do it and we knew it was not cool — we knew it wasn’t, like, a punk-rock cool thing — but I was kinda so anti-punk rock.”

 

If that made you feel nostalgic, get tickets to their May 23rd show HERE! 

Filed under: Garden State, New Slang, The Shins