NATALIE PORTMAN'S CHARACTER in Garden State says: "the Shins will change your life." The acclaimed 2004 movie was written and directed by America's geeky golden boy, Zach Braff, who starred in it and chose two Shins tracks, including the wistfully jangling New Slang, for the soundtrack. Braff also just happens to be the lead actor in quirky US TV comedy hit Scrubs, which featured New Slang in an episode, while Shins music has been used in everything from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie to The Sopranos.
Suddenly, the Shins are everywhere you look and listen in America. And now, following the raved-over Oh, Inverted World (2001) and Chutes Too Narrow (2003), they're releasing a third album, Wincing the Night Away. That ubiquity looks set to be repeated over here, transforming them from critics' darlings to major-league concern.
"Who's saying that? Hopefully not our label," says James Mercer, the band's quiet, soft-spoken singer, songwriter and guitarist, a bit of a geeky golden boy himself. "We really haven't solicited any of it.
I don't know why our music is being used on adverts and movies. But it is kinda scary, the idea of becoming really huge.
I worry about how busy that would mean I would have to be, how lazy I couldn't be!
I like to have a simple life, and things like that complicate things."
But Mercer is no moaning emo kid or slacker depressive. If anything, the slight 37-year-old is the Morrissey of New Mexico (the band began in 1997 in Albuquerque), or even the Woody Allen of US indie, all self-deprecating humour and nerdish charm.
And although he has one of those quintessentially American high-register power pop voices suggestive of anguish and torment ("How do I get it so high? I squeeze my left nut. The whole time.
The harder I squeeze the higher it goes"), he spent his teenage years in Britain after his father moved the family to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk in 1985. From 15 to 19, Mercer found himself drawn to the mournful melodies and mordant wit of the Smiths, Echo the Bunnymen and the Cure, connecting with their powerful ability to "turn a shitty life into something beautiful".
He adds: "I was a really shy kid who went for long periods of time without having friends because of that.
I was way too shy to ever try being in a band."
Wincing the Night Away is the band's most accomplished, adventurous album yet, all lush layers of sound and texture. This time, explains Mercer, he worked on the record alone in his home studio before allowing the other members to contribute.
"They were very good," he says. "They gave me room to experiment."
Mercer denies any over-arching concept, but the 11 tracks, starting with the gorgeous Sleeping Lessons, have a "sort of romantic or spooky atmosphere that you'd want to spend time in, with ghosts and strange sounds.
The songs all take place in the night. Sleeping Lessons lulls you into this dreamworld."
The album is also about wincing.
All night. Which Mercer does frequently. "I sometimes wince, almost like I'm in pain.
When I can't sleep, generally it's because I'm thinking about stressful things, bad memories, and the times I've made an ass of myself. My wife's always telling me, 'Stop your damn wincing!'" Normally, he reaches for sleeping pills; I recommend St John's Wort.
"Does it work? That's incredible. That stuff grows like weeds over here.
They mow it. Cool, I'll definitely try it."
With age, however, Mercer is becoming less troubled.
As he says, "Sometime in my late twenties I stopped trying to be cool." He's getting happier in his skin. Even though the idea of appearing on The Late Show With David Letterman, as the Shins will soon, "presses all the buttons: stage fright, anxiety, all that".
He's learning to relax a little and enjoy his success.
Is Mercer worried that, married, increasingly confident and untroubled, he's ironing away many of the anxieties that made him want to make the music in the first place? "Er, yes, I think I am," he replies.
You don't have to agree, I tell him. "No, but I think at some point I won't need the Shins. I'm serious!
I'm getting more comfortable with things."
Presumably, he'll still be able to draw on the miseries of his adolescence? "Maybe so," he winces.
"Or the other hope is that I can just learn how to write about hypothetical situations. Or I need to, and I did it a bit on this record, branch out and find new territory."
• Wincing the Night Away is out this week on Sub Pop.
"WHILE indie rock has embraced grander and more elaborate productions, the Shins have remained unlikely champions of uncertainty and understatement. Unlike many of their meteorically successful indie peers, the Shins don't want to change your life - and that's a good thing, because the band's biggest strength is an uncanny gift for conjuring a deep, vivid, and palpable sense of the familiar."
"We're going to have a new favorite song tomorrow, but for now we're getting behind the elegiac Turn on Me, which opens like the Cramps covering the Supremes and evolves into this gorgeous, lilting serenade to heartbreak.
It also features the cutest line in a sad, sad song that we've ever heard: 'You had to know I was fond of you, fond of you.' Oh boys, fondness doesn't even begin to describe it."
"If, like me, you're nerdy enough to get jazzed about the way James Mercer combines existentialist angst with a killer guitar-pop groove, you're going to love this album.
If you're put off by indie-rock navel-gazing, you're probably not going to be a Shins fan anyway. There's not a stadium rock riff on the entire album." Kulturblog.
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