We're closer to this past April's Coachella than we are to next year's installment of the Indio music festival, but that won't stop us from already starting to piece together the 2017 lineup.
Portland's KBOO sat down with the Shins' James Mercer to talk about the beloved indie pop band's forthcoming album—its first since 2012's Port of Morrow.
"The record is done basically and mixed," said Mercer. "We've been making little tweaks just because we have extra time. My intention was to have the record come out this year, but there's inevitably these reasons that the label or whatever wants to postpone release just so that they have more time to set things up and do whatever sort of marketing things they have to do."
It turns out "these reasons" for pushing the highly anticipated 2016 album to a January 2017 release boils down to Coachella. Here's Mercer again:
"It's funny because I think this whole new culture of festivals has taken over. Coachella was a factor in my label wanting to postpone the release of the record. Because Coachella is such a powerful influencer, it's such a high profile festival that we want to get as good a placement as we can in it. And I guess apparently when you release your record has some sort of an influence on that."
So there you have it—it sounds like a pretty safe bet that the Shins will be playing Coachella 2017. And according to Mercer's logic, we'd assume the band will be pretty high up on the lineup—after all, it's been six years since the Shins last toured.
You can listen to the whole interview below—courtesy of Stereogum—and hear Mercer's thoughts on the state of the music industry, producing Broken Bells songs, growing up as a skater kid and how he feels about the new album.
