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" Collaboration is something I missed at one point in The Shins. I really wanted to have that experience again, you know, not having everything rely on me. I wanted to have a partner. "

James Mercer

Experience

Collaboration

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James Mercer

Always

Vehicle

" I kinda learned to sing singing to Echo and the Bunnymen songs and Smiths songs: Morrissey would be a big favorite. "

" For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something. "

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James Mercer

Things

Pretty

" My dad was a Navy munitions officer, and by the end of his career, he was a specialist in nuclear weapons. "

James Mercer

Career

Nuclear Weapons

" I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That's something that I do habitually. "

" When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess. "

James Mercer

Alone

Beginning

" I have no ethics when it comes to art. You just do what you can to make it as beautiful as you can. "

" I was really shy as a kid. "

" Maybe it's just parenthood that puts you in a situation where you just have to develop a new attitude, I guess, about things. "

" I sit and write songs alone and then get together with people to help me flesh it out into a recording. "

James Mercer

People

Together

" My hope is that one day I'll be able to work and have a quieter life, but still a creative life. "

" So happy that Broken Bells is a thing in my life and really cool in so many ways. Not only, like, as something to sell records and be a band and whatnot, but just to give me an outlet and give me a fresh approach on things. "

" I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing. "