It seems that one of our 101 Most Anticipated Albums Of 2016 won’t be out until 2017. Last week, Portland-based community radio station KBOO aired an interview with the Shins’ James Mercer during their bi-weekly “Youth Pandemonium” program in which Mercer describes Columbia Records’ decision to hold back on the the follow-up to 2012’s Port Of Morrow in order to get the band better lineup placement come Coachella 2017. During a segment — which was recorded at Mercer’s studio in Portland — that covered the band’s appearance on Netflix’s Beat Bugs, the possibility of a Flake Music release, the effect of digital music on the music industry, and much more, the frontman described his understanding of Columbia’s process in postponing the album:

“The record is done basically and mixed. We’ve been making little tweaks just because we have extra time. My intention was to have the the record to 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 and things that they have to do. So it looks like it’ll be coming out next year. Early next year, like January hopefully.”

He later continued:

“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.”

On what to expect from the new album:

“I’m really excited about this record. We had a good time making it. It was a lot of hard work, but I think we’ve got something that Shins fans will really love and I think there’s some other things on there that are just different enough. I made a concerted effort on certain songs to fit the palate, or to use the palate that I’ve used historically for the band. And then on other songs, I really jumped off because I was having so much fun just leaning some new tools that I had at my disposal like arpeggiators and things. So I was able to do some stuff that is a bit more synth-oriented… I think lyrically I’m better than I ever was and I think my songwriting is stronger than it ever was.”

Check out the full interview below via Reddit.

