“Wincing the night away,” sounds like a poetic way to describe dreaming. When we’re dreaming, we may appear stoic on the outside, but on the inside, we’re being plunged into absurd situations with subliminal signs that only dreams can give justice to.

This is what the New Mexico-based, indie-pop band the Shins wanted. No more stoic, two-dimensional stuff. They want it to be clear that they are entering the uncharted territory of the mind.

The Shins are riding a wave of success that they’ve generated for themselves. The release of their new record, Wincing the Night Away (released Jan. 23 2007 on Sub Pop Records), will surely be accompanied by some healthy media buzz. It is also an anomaly of sorts that the Shins are as successful as they are. In the last few years, the Shins have only had one song people really know about: “New Slang (thanks to Zach Braff’s film Garden State). It is a good song, but it is also a definition of what the Shins are-a crispy, rustic and sensitive band channeling their art through a light, acoustic medium.

Their first three albums are almost gimmicky-there are a few good songs, and nothing that could be deemed outright “bad,” but it is all stuck in a rather elementary style. An organic acoustic tapestry can only be exploited for so long before it starts to lose its luster. If the Shins had tried tapping into the same oil well of proven indie success on this release, they probably would have found their fans shifting to alternative energy. The Shins had soul, but they lacked dimension.

Finally, with Wincing the Night Away, the Shins have made an album featuring vast soundscapes, as if they’re stretching their two-dimensional song schemes of the past into mysterious multi-dimensional entities.

The Shins offer us a deeply textured collection of songs that lull the psyche into the wondrous and infinite world of our dreams. Not surprisingly, the title, Wincing the Night Away, pays homage to the metaphorical mental state that can be achieved through careful indulgence of the album. Wincing the Night Away escapes the realms of what can be explained by our limited consciousness.

Fittingly, the experience of listening to the album is like being in a dream-like state, where we wince the night away through both the perils and fantastic facets of our dreams. We wince as our brains struggle to desperately make sense of stimuli as it swirls around our heads.

The album starts off with “Sleeping Lessons,” an aptly titled song given the fact that this record is a metaphor for dreams-the rabble-rousing terror of the power of our subconscious. In the song, lead singer James Mercer sings through a grainy vocal track buried under a heft of instrumentation. That relaxing and restful aura offsets the straining voice of a man trapped under the heavy layers of the domineering human subconscious.

In “Red Rabbits,” it sounds like there is a guy playing acoustic guitar inside a cave with velvety, pulsating walls-like the bad guy’s lair in a horror movie. The guitarist strums a catchy rhythm. And then there is the Mercer in the corner, sitting on a stool, leaning forwards into a microphone, picturesquely spouting out his heart-wrenching life meanderings.

“Black Wave” casts the ominous shadow of night over the aural faculties. It’s a dim-sounding song, like a song obscured by the night’s concealing cape. Mercer stares through this gloomy soundscape, asserting at the end that he’s “looking at the brighter side.” It’s like he’s standing, broken, over the grave of a loved one. “Black Wave” is Mercer in a moment of sadness trying to counteract the wince-inducing pangs by maintaining optimism.

While some of the songs still sound like classic Shins, there is an immediately noticeable air of psychedelia. They are sure to stitch the new psychedelic element seamlessly with their older style. The end result is a record that has the same lightweight and wavy innocence of the Flaming Lips. The Lips, though, comment on their reality by escaping it-by shrouding it in humor and fiction. The Shins stare the throes of life right in the face. This kind of deep introspection allows the Shins to resonate quite well with their fans. They delve so far into the psyche that along the way they’re bound to touch on something meaningful for everyone.

The Shins’ new album is a tasty treat of mind-expanding musical and lyrical textures that seem to skim effortlessly into the infinity of space.