It's been five years since the las Shins album, Port of Morrow, a middling release that had many fans wondering if the band had lost that whimsical spark. Heartworms proves this notion wrong in the most critical way, it took the band being whittled down to just James Mercer in order to create an album that feels like a return to form as well as a new direction. To achieve this new direction Mercer frequently looks back. Not back to the bands glory days of being pop culture’s favourite band, but back to his own up-bringing; musical or otherwise. This is the first album that wears Mercer's influences on his sleeve. Second track "Painting a hole" has the mystical tone of The Beatles Revolver period.
Elsewhere on the album Mercer's teenage years in England are given lots of attention. At 46 years old, no matter how young and full of energy he sounds, Mercer's reminiscing of his growing up in Suffolk, a time in which he has stated that his musical identity was formed, gives the album a nice sense of theme on the likes of "Mildenhall in which flat tops are so nu wave.
The light touch is back in the music with Mercer relying on sunny synth lines to soundtrack bad deeds in "Half a Million". Albums about lost youth can come across as self-indulgent, but Mercer keeps enough of the fun of listening to a Shins album present. This is not a man looking back with regret, he is looking back to make sense of all he has now.
