Shipping News formed in 1996 as a result of former Rodan bandmates Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble writing and recording music for the NPR program This American Life. Inspired by their work for NPR, Mueller and Noble formulated the idea for a new band. After adding drummer Kyle Crabtree in 1997, Shipping News were complete. The three took the band's name from a novel by E. Annie Proulx, and released their first record, Save Everything, in the summer of 1997. They followed up the album a year later, in May, with a split EP CD with Metroshifter. Three years later, in 2001, Shipping News released their second full-length album, Very Soon, and in Pleasant Company. The album was written over a two-and-a-half-year period and recorded in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Three EPs -- RMSN EP 1: Carrier, RMSN EP 2: Sickening Bridge, and RMSN EP 3: Variegated -- were released between fall 2001 and fall 2002. Several months later, the band issued a collection of those EPs with three brand-new tracks under the title Three-Four. Flies the Fields followed in 2005. In 2009, Noble was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma. Despite Noble's ongoing battle with the disease, Shipping News released the album One Less Heartless to Fear in 2010. Noble passed away on August 4, 2012, at the age of 40. ~ Diana Potts