You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

This episode has some explicit language.

What are you listening to?

The shins. You know them?

No.

I'm getting this one song. They'll change her life, I swear.

That's Natalie Portman and Zach Braff in the movie Garden State, which came out in 2004.

And this song, the song she says will change your life, is New Slang by the shins.

Singer, songwriter and producer James Mercer wrote it when he was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It came out as a single, and then he re-recorded it for the shins' debut album, O Inverted World, which came out 20 years ago in 2001.

After Garden State came out, that album went gold, and the soundtrack to the movie won a Grammy.

Nowadays, James Mercer lives in Portland.

I spoke to him from his home studio, and he told me how the shins actually first started as a recording project, a side project, while he was in another band called Flake Music.

And in this episode, James breaks down New Slang, and looks back at how his songwriting and his early home recording skills came together to make this iconic song.

My name is James Mercer.

Back in, I guess, 89, I moved here from the UK. My dad was stationed at an RAF base over there.

I just moved back to the States at 18, and just by default went to UNM.

And I met this guy, Neil Langford.

Neil and I were listening to the same sort of music, so Neil and I decided to start our own band.

Yeah!

You know, we had Fuzz Pedals, and it was loud, and it kind of had some relationship with the Grunge vibe of the early 90s.

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