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Sep 24, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Marisa Kula The Shins

The Shins have shared two versions of a new song called “The Great Divide.” The main version was shared via a video for it, but there is also a “flipped” version available via Amazon Music. Check out both versions below.

James Mercer, Jon Sortland, and Yuuki Matthews all co-wrote and co-produced the song. In a press release Mercer says the song is “a blend of futurism and nostalgia. We used everything from vintage synthesizers to iPhones, from a sixties Ludwig kit to an 808.”

Paul Trillo directed the video with creative direction from Jon Sortland and production provided by Hunters House Entertainment Group.

“While the track feels intimate lyrically, the performance called for something visually vast in scale,” says Sortland in the press release.

Trillo had this to say: “For me ‘The Great Divide’ is about coming to a turning point. The theme of the song speaks to this palpable rift we’re all feeling right now. So when Jon Sortland first reached out with a flurry of ideas, I got really excited at what this could be. We knew we wanted to craft something as grand as the song; something that was both wildly surreal yet also resonates on a human level. I wanted to place the current state of things, this ‘Great Divide’ we’re going through, within the larger context of the universe. Like the song itself, it was both timely and timeless. That’s when I sort of stumbled on this idea of an infinite zoom out through time. The song also has this entrancing quality that keeps pulling you in further and further, so that continual motion made a lot of sense.”

The Shins’ last two albums were 2017’s Heartworms and its 2018 companion album The Worm’s Heart, which was a reworked version of Heartworms.

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