You ever get that thing where you hear a song you instantly fall in love with, but you don't know anything else about the band? Well that probably doesn't sound that unusual. But what about the extra thing I occasionally have where the song is SO good, and the band is SO unknown to me, that there's some trepidation about hearing anything else by them in case it doesn't live up to that magical first song.  The Shins this week celebrate 10 years since they released  "Wincing The Night Away", an album which contains the track "Phantom Limb", a recorded event so perfect in it's songwriting, lyrics and performance, that instead of hunting down more by them, I stopped the search then and there.

I was pretty late to hearing Phantom Limb. It's really only come into my musical conscience in the last 4 or 5 years. Pretty crazy to be writing something for the 10th anniversary of an album that I have never actually listened to in its entirety.

I think for some newly discovered artists, I'm quite content now with knowing and loving the hell outta the first song I hear, and then taking a step back and seeing if the universe throws it back my way somehow. 

In the last few years I have seen The Shins on the Nigel Godrich produced show, " From The Basement", in which they were superbly promoting "Port Of Morrow", the successor to 'Wincing'. I've also seen frontman James Mercer with producer extraordinaire, Dangermouse, in their side-band 'Broken Bells', performing a Beatles tribute on the Letterman show. " And I Love Her", acoustic guitar, vocals, keyboards and Ringo Starr's drums sampled and looped, both the audio and the video, played on a vintage TV. 

Why the hell didn't I track down more from The Shins? Why don't I know every album backwards? If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.

I secretly think the universe has it in for me to become a big Shins fan. And if it doesn't happen I like the idea of one day dying and thinking that the entire recorded output of The Shins was incredible, based on hearing one song. 

Please don't spoil the magic for me by telling me that it all went a bit south after this album. Let this alternate reality live on inside my head. An alternate reality where The Shins are right up there with all the other artists that I absolutely love just one song and know nothing else; Barry Ryan (Eloise), The Odds (Someone Who's Cool), Freda Payne (Band Of Gold), Pluto Jonze (Eject), Belle & Sebastian (Legal Man), Blake Mills (If I'm Unworthy), Scandal (The Warrior). 

There ya go universe, separate the wheat from the chaff and get back to me... I might even go and listen to this album while I wait.

Love The Shins? Can relate to my one-song-wonder-band-preservation tactics? We're all pretty keen to hear the new Shins offering this year, too - their new album 'Heartworms' set to drop in early March (hey, might even listen to the whole thing if the fancy strikes). You'll be the first to know when it's released. Listen out.