It’s almost as if they were coached by Steve Albini. On their latest record, Chicago indie rock band Shipping News channels its best Shellac: bleating out lyrics Albini-style on “The Delicate,” bringing melody and discord together on “(Morays or) Demons.”
But on One Less Heartless to Fear, the band isn’t ripping off the famed ’90s rock trio – but they certainly seem to be reinterpreting them. Where Shellac tracks (I’m thinking Terraform, particularly) are all discord-discord-discord then EPIC SOUND EXPLOSION, Shipping News carefully paves a smooth road of trilling, almost shoe-gazing rock first. And when that’s nice and shiny and pretty, the band then slowly, surely, tilts it, letting every song slowly slide out of control before finally careening off the edge. Sounds meet their demise under the watch of Shipping News. That’s an art they’ve mastered: turning the pristine into the slightly, almost unnoticeably, imperfect. – Leah Sottile
Recommended download: “This is Not An Exit”
This article appears in Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2010.
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