The Shins are a kick

The Shins, one of our weirdest and most winsome pop bands, are a case study in career navigation. The group released a lo-fi gem of a debut, "Oh, Inverted World," in 2001. Indie kids flocked to the fold. One lilting nugget from that album, a song called "New Slang," was licensed by McDonald's, heard in an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and used as background music in MTV's "Newlyweds." Miraculously, the Shins survived the sophomore slump with indie cred intact, thanks to a bigger, bolder batch of skewed beauties titled "Chutes Too Narrow." Indie kids' moms started listening. And then the Shins came face to face with the dreaded Shout-Out Heard 'Round the World.

"You've gotta hear this song. It'll change your life," proclaims Natalie Portman's character, Sam, of "New Slang" in the 2004 film "Garden State." The planet was on alert.

Three years later, James Mercer and company have delivered. "Wincing the Night Away," recorded in Mercer's basement studio in Portland, Ore., and in stores today, is signature Shins: charming, melodious, inscrutable. Mercer is a classicist and an oddball; he genuflects at the pop-hook altar and leaves behind his own twisted tokens. The new album's first single, "Phantom Limb," evokes Brian Wilson in a postmodern wasteland, irresistible and unknowable.

But that single's B-side is the sound of a band breaking out -- not in any commercial sense, but from its own mold. "Sleeping Lessons" begins with blurry keyboard arpeggios and Mercer's clarion vocals treated to a toxic shimmer. Strummed acoustic guitars arrive -- stiff and impatient, seemingly from every direction. At the 2 1/2-min ute mark, the band falls into a raucous rave-up, and Mercer vaults into gravity-defying falsetto.

It's no small feat to stretch artistically and remain true to your musical nature. But in the Shins' new world of ambient textures and complicated dynamics, melody still rules -- mostly. "Pam Berry" is a minute of fuzz about a girl who spits, and a song whose raison d'etre will remain a mystery even to devotees who revel in Mercer's cryptic ways. But "Sea Legs" is a gratifying venture into fresh terrain: hip-hop beats, funk bass, and a melodic darkness that neither jangles nor chimes. Distressed synth samples anchor "Spilt Needles," while tweaked pianos and sickly strings set "Red Rabbits" adrift in a narcotic haze.

Mercer tosses a few delicious bones to Shins purists. For those sweet, confused pop lovers who want another jaunty, heartfelt, and ridiculously verbose stab at finding sense in a senseless world: "Girl Sailor," "Australia," "Turn on Me," and the album's sublime closing track, "A Comet Appears." "Every post you can hitch your faith on is a pie in the sky/ Chock-full of lies/ A tool we devise to make sinking stones fly," Mercer reminds us in that last song, willfully confusing desperation and hope. It won't change your life. But that was never the plan. Mercer knows better.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.