*** Shipping News

VERY SOON, AND IN PLEASANT COMPANY

(Quarterstick)

Mixed at Boston's Sonics Studio, the second full-length from this Louisville crew is shot through with jarring shifts in emotion. There are no gentle modulations here. One minute, Shipping News are pounding out angular Jesus Lizard-style clang, looking to see where the chaos theory of math rock will take them ("The March Song"). The next, they're neck-deep in devastation ("Actual Blood"), with darkly hued chamber strings carrying their beautiful mourning to the netherworld. Then the proceedings fracture into a sparse, dead-rock nothingness, where the singing, what little there is of it, strains to underline the pent-up futility in the music ("Quiet Victories").

Bassist Jason Noble (also of Rachel's) and guitarist Jeff Mueller (also of June of 44) inject some of the dynamics and experimentalism they honed together in Rodan. Drummer Kyle Crabtree (of Metroshifter) pushes nihilist beats like those on "Nine Bodies," which sounds like malicious prog-rock fed through the Vincent Price Fly setting on a minimalist filter. But it's the textures supplied by slowly chiming guitars and Rachel's pals Christian Frederickson (viola) and Edward Grimes (vibes) that lift this dementia and allow it to succeed, despite long stretches of seeming aimlessness.

Tristram Lozaw