“I'm just a simple man cursed with an honest heart”: The Line of Best Fit meets The Shins' James Mercer

It was all going fine, until I mentioned his kids.

“When you have kids and you love these little creatures so much,” James Mercer explains from his home in Portland, Oregon, “and you realise how fragile they are, and you see that there are children dying in Somalia. It gets pretty heavy.” Let’s compare notes here: I’m in the hinterland of my early twenties, working a low-wage, part-time job and living with my girlfriend. I don’t really have to think about too much of importance, aside from getting my rent in on time. James Mercer is nearly twice my age, a husband, father, Shin, and occasional Broken Bell – and this conversation is getting to be a real eye-opener. “Murder is as human as language, and what a struggle that is as a parent to deal with that, and you know that one day they will have to know about the dark things that continue to happen on this planet.” These are the words of a man who is as vulnerable and scared as he is proud and content.

These sentiments inform a great deal of The Shins’ fourth album, Port of Morrow; it features Mercer’s most direct set of lyrics to date, a fact he’s well aware of. “I think I’ve always shied away from coming right out and saying it,” he claims. “I’ve been frustrated in the past by putting out a song and – you need to read the lyrics, maybe, and think about them for a second – but they’re there, you can tell what I’m singing about. But I’m a little disappointed by now to discover that’s not the case at all!” Certainly, admissions like “I’m just a simple man cursed with an honest heart,” (‘Bait and Switch’) or “It’s not that the darkness can’t touch our lives – I know it will in time,” (‘September’) are more forward than the Shins lyrics of old; however, the music remains as hook-laden as ever. The aforementioned ‘Bait and Switch’ may be pure Shins, but Mercer picks out a Hall and Oates influence on ’40 Mark Strasse’, while the straight-up balladry on ‘For a Fool’ is closer to the sound of seventies Laurel Canyon than most singer-songwriters manage.

Mercer’s new-found clarity has been helped by two of his most recent collaborators – fellow Broken Bell Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and Morrow producer Greg Kurstin. The former gave him a newfound confidence, especially where his singing is concerned; “You feel a little awkward sometimes trying something new and different, and inherently there’s a little bit of “Is this going to be cool, or some sort of embarrassing failure?” he laughs. There was, however, a temptation to shy away from working with Burton again on the new album. “There was the temptation to ask, but it would mean that there would be less of a distinction between Broken Bells and The Shins, so I just left it at that.” As for Kurstin, the first producer he’s worked with over an entire album, he’s “the Michael Caine of producers – because, y’know, he can do anything but do it really well.”

Early claims that there were “thirty songs” in the running for the record have proved to be somewhat exaggerated; “When I say stuff like that,” Mercer chuckles, “it means thirty ideas that I think definitely could be turned into songs.” Ah. However, some of those ideas have even been knocking about since 2004. “We actually used to play a version of ‘Port of Morrow’ like eight years ago, and it never really worked,” he says of the new album’s title track; the version that made the record – sung in an almost unrecognisable falsetto – once again touches on “the black hole of human behaviour,” as Mercer says – or, indeed, as he sings it, “a fact of life I must impress on my little girl.” He also insists that the song would not have come out in the same way if he weren’t a father; “The world becomes very different , and it’s the darkness that becomes the most poignant.”

As you may be able to tell, Port of Morrow is the first album Mercer has made as a father, and his two daughters are now getting to the age where they can appreciate what he does. “They both really like the new single. That’s the first time I’ve had that sort of experience, where they request it – ‘Play ‘Simple Song’!’” To an extent, it’s also his first record as a husband; Broken Bells was made just after Mercer’s wedding but, he quips, “Brian Burton is so un-married that he cancels my married out!” As for the Port of Morrow itself, a cursory Google search reveals little but information about the Shins’ album (“Oh dammit,” Mercer quips. “So we’ve outshined the actual Port of Morrow!”), but it’s a location that actually holds a certain significance for The Shins. “It’s really just a sign on the side of the road as you’re heading back into Oregon; you see this little sign says ‘Port of Morrow this way’ and you’re kinda out in nowhere.” Mercer’s imagination, however, took the imagery to its logical conclusion – “I started picturing it as the port on the river Styx, maybe, where you just head out and… it’s death, basically.”

In spite of the darker, more contemplative mood that makes Port of Morrow a completely different beast from The Shins’ previous three albums, Mercer retains a unique sense of humour. The brilliant video for ‘Simple Song’ has the singer playing a dead father, using his video will to send his children (played by the rest of the band) on a treasure hunt for the deeds to the family home. However, with Justin Timberlake’s spoof on Bon Iver for Saturday Night Live, and Mercer’s knowing self-parody as an alternative rock demigod on Portlandia, the mass acceptance of indie rock as comedy fodder was something Mercer could never have predicted. “It was made pretty clear by kids in high school and so on that that shit was just weird. Going back to when Slanted and Enchanted came out, to think somehow that that was going to become the iconic thing that it is now, and that it would directly lead to this crazy new popularity of stuff, I probably would never have guessed.”

Then again, with its most accessible – and most human - record to date, you can’t help but struggle to think of The Shins as a band operating outside of what James Mercer calls “the fabric of popular culture.” Still, for all the success, it’s fatherhood that remains on Mercer’s mind – and given the fear the experience has instilled in him, he claims it’s changed him for the better. “It’s a wonderful, beautiful thing, and I feel much more engaged to every person,” he insists, and it’s hard not to believe him. After all, it’s what The Shins’ music is really about: for all the anxiety life throws at you, there is always hope.

Port of Morrow will be released on the 19 March through Columbia.