2000 Great Songs #1245: Know Your Onion!
The Shins ' 2001 semi-debut (depends on whether you count the 1997 Flake Music record as a Shins album), Oh, Inverted World , was obviously the sort of thing that a lot of us got very into at the time. And while " New Slang " is the tune that seemed to get the most traction over time (aided, or maybe hindered, by that whole Garden State thing), it was "Know Your Onion!" which first lured me in to the record. It's more upbeat, a more immediate pop song, and while James Mercer's vocals could be as indecipherable as Michael Stipe 's a generation earlier, the bits and pieces that got through seemed pretty interesting. When it comes to nostalgia for that early post-millennial age, this one is up at the top of the list. Live on tv: Of Montreal cover:
