The World According to Andy Shauf
Growing up on the vast prairies of Canada’s Saskatchewan province left its mark on Andy Shauf’s music. The soaring folk orchestrations, lyrics rife with loneliness and regret, and multi-instrumental virtuosity all point to an artist whose music is shaped by the solitude of rural life. Shauf’s lyrics are preoccupied with how places and the memories they hold shape our identities. His discography weaves a musical tapestry of old friends, loved ones, and the small towns we all inhabit in our minds. In spite of his music’s Rockwellian themes, Shauf doesn’t settle for nostalgia. He combines deft storytelling with a dark wit. His music is an invitation to step out of our worlds and into his.
The child of evangelical parents, Shauf spent his teen years playing in a Christian pop-punk band before branching off on his own. He self-released his debut album Darker Days in 2009, followed by Waiting for the Sun to Leave a year later. Both albums seemed intent on perfecting the traditional folk-pop formula of breezy guitars and catchy refrains sung in two-part harmony, exemplified by the songs “Crushes” and “I Don’t Really.” Shauf’s music took a leap forward on his 2012 album The Bearer of Bad News, re-released in 2015 by ANTI-. The album is much more interesting than Shauf’s earlier work, offering melancholy folk orchestrations marrying piano, clarinet, and strings. The addition of the clarinet marked a turning point for Shauf’s music, freeing him to explore more orchestral arrangements and eventually becoming part of his signature sound. What that sound would become was still unclear on Bearer of Bad News, which alternated between Elliot Smith-style jangle pop and smooth piano rock.
Shauf’s sound crystallized on his breakout 2016 concept album, The Party, on which each song recounts the regrettable events of a party from a different attendee’s perspective. These songs are Shauf at his best, offering wry first-person commentary on the types of interactions you wake up regretting the next morning. After listening to the album the strengths of Shauf’s music become clear, namely his gift for crafting varied arrangements (he plays every instrument except strings) and his smooth tenor vocals, vaguely reminiscent of Paul Simon. No song better exemplifies these strengths than “The Magician.” The song begins with a moody clarinet melody played over plodding piano chords before adding soaring strings and a guitar riff, all tied together by Shauf’s buttery vocals crooning to the beat. Painstakingly recorded in sequential order, the album won critical acclaim and earned Shauf a nomination for the Polaris Prize, awarded to the best Canadian album of the year.
Shauf’s next concept album, The Neon Skyline, was released in January 2020. Taking place again over the course of a single night, the album follows its protagonist leading up to and following his impromptu run-in with an ex. The album offers Shauf’s most focused narrative arc and pleasing soft-rock arrangements but feels musically stagnant by its midpoint. There’s nothing significantly different between the music on this album and 2016’s, and perhaps that’s the problem. By the time the album finishes it feels like we’ve heard every variation of breezy guitars and bright piano one can reasonably fit into 34 minutes. In short, Shauf’s knack for writing music that fades into the background becomes a liability when stretched out over eleven songs.
That’s not to take away from the storyline, which has enough going on to keep your attention the first time through. One of the album’s highlights begins with “Living Room,” about a TMI-moment concerning a casual friend’s son. The follow up “Dust Kids” whisks us into a vision quest about death, reincarnation, and repeating our parents’ mistakes. Shauf’s ability to move seamlessly between the past and present, the imagined and real, adds a cinematic quality to his music. But unlike watching a movie, we came for the music; the storyline is secondary. Too often on Neon Skyline it feels like Shauf gets these backwards.
No Andy Shauf article would be complete without discussing his band Foxwarren, composed of Shauf and childhood friends from Saskatchewan. Named after the hometown of two of the band members, Foxwarren makes music that feels deeply personal, radiating the collective vulnerability that exists among old friends. Their self-titled sophomore album is one of my favorite indie rock records of 2018. The album takes a stylistically different approach from Shauf’s solo music, using looser psych-rock and bluegrass inspired arrangements and more impressionistic lyrics. The guitar on the opener “To Be” alternates between folksy acoustic and spaced-out, reverb-laden rock, a microcosm of the way the album blurs the lines between the two styles.
The album’s strongest moments sit at this genre-bending juncture, particularly the songs “Lost in a Dream” and “Everything Apart.” “Lost in a Dream” begins as an off-kilter piano ballad before transitioning into an extended outro of brooding strings, ascending piano, and an eerie synth. Shauf’s vocals on the track are hushed to the point of a whisper, adding to the sense of psychic unease. All this tension is resolved on the following track “Everything Apart,” a krautrock-inspired single with a propulsive rhythm.
There’s something cathartic about Foxwarren’s music. Maybe it’s the fact that I first heard it on a road trip to the Smoky Mountains. Or maybe it’s from the time I listened to it as the stars came out on a backpacking trip. But every time the sound of crickets envelops the closing track, “Give It a Chance,” I’m transported to a different place. And just about every one of the people I’ve listened to Foxwarren with shares that feeling. Put simply, Foxwarren makes music that most people can’t help but connect with. Some might say that means they’re banal, not interesting enough to rile any feathers. Perhaps. But they sound damn good around a campfire. And after two years of abiding by “MAINTAIN 6 FEET DISTANCE” signs in Trader Joe’s, we could all use more of those shared moments. So, listen to Foxwarren. Then share them with your friends and listen together.
Edited by Nate Culbert, editor of Music You Need To Know
Cover art by Wyatt Warren