One Less Heartless to Fear

VINYL FORMAT. The Shipping News' new album, called One Less Heartless to Fear, is their first new full length album since Flies the Fields (2005), and a helluva lot has happened in the last five years. Two weddings, fatherhood, serious illness, a presidential election, multiple wars, city moves, two Batman films and lots of time with friends playing songs. These things seem to have inspired the band to make their most aggressive and adolescent album to date. Shipping News has jettisoned the long songs (and glacial tempos) of the past and is concentrating on energetic blasts of noisy rock (with a little gallows humor thrown in). While slipping into a slightly more sympathetic mood once or twice, the new songs are stripped down and pretty much nasty. Working for the first time with the kind folks at Karate Body Records, this album marks the fourteenth year of the band's existence. One Less Heartless to Fear features seven brand new songs and two "oldies," recorded live on a digital multitrack system at the all-ages venue Skull Alley (Louisville) and The O-Nest (Tokyo).