The Shins

Oh, Inverted World
Sub Pop, 2001

There is nothing more pathetic than watching local music critics scramble over one another for review copies of the latest trendy North American indie album. It's not that I think all Australian critics should be obligated to write about homegrown bands, but there is something tragic about the delusion that their opinions are important or even relevant when it comes to the Next Big Thing from overseas. As a general rule, no one cares what Australians think about the music scene in New York any more than The Beatles agonized over their reviews in The Times Of India. And in the age of instant access to overseas tastemakers like Pitchfork and Drowned In Sound, there are fewer and fewer reasons for local readers to either.

There are a hundred albums I could have picked as examples for this week's column but for some reason The Shins stood out the most. The consummate band for middle-class white kids who fret over boys and girls they haven't met yet while sipping tea and trying on cardigans, The Shins somehow became Bigger Than Jesus among local critics on the strength of their debut album Oh, Inverted World, before Natalie Portman stomped all over their credibility in the film Garden State. "You've got to hear this one song, it'll change your life," she urged, in the least sincere performance of her career, managing in the process to highlight what an absurd suggestion it was that a flaccid 1960s pop regurgitation could be life-changing! anyway.

The point isn't that The Shins are bad, it's just that they're not all that good. It is amazing, but sadly also quite commonplace, that some sub-par band from overseas can manage to enthral music critics thousands of kilometres away with one or two unremarkable albums. What lies beneath the gushing reviews of The Shins and other trendy foreign bands is the subconscious belief that real pop music can only be made in North America or England, and thus the uncritical acceptance of what's hot and what's not from those who are based there. For at least the last few years, local "best of year" lists have read as if they were taken straight from the pages of Spin or Uncut. Even if you don't take that as a sign of our cultural cringe, isn't there a good argument for doing something different?