Few artists are storytellers as deft
and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based,
Saskatchewan-raised musician's songs unfold like short fiction: they're densely
layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. On his new album The Neon Skyline (out January 24), he sets a familiar scene of inviting a friend for beers on the opening
title track: "I said, 'Come to the Skyline, I’ll be washing my sins away.'
He just laughed, said 'I’ll be late, you
know how I can be.'" The LP's 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple
plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in
town, and she eventually shows up. While its overarching narrative is riveting,
the real thrill of the album comes from how Shauf finds the humanity and humor
in a typical night out and the ashes of a past relationship.
His last full-length 2016's The Party was an impressive collection
of ornate and affecting songs that followed different attendees of a house
party. Shauf's attention-to-detail in his writing evoked Randy Newman and his
unorthodox, flowing lyrical phrasing recalled Joni Mitchell. Though that album
was his breakthrough, his undeniable songwriting talent has been long evident.
Raised in Bienfait, Saskatchewan, he cut his teeth in the nearby Regina music
community. His 2012 LP The Bearer of Bad
News documented his already-formed musical ambition and showcased Shauf's
burgeoning voice as a narrative songwriter with songs like "Hometown
Hero," "Wendell Walker," and "My Dear Helen" feeling
like standalone, self-contained worlds. In 2018, his band Foxwarren, formed
over 10 years ago with childhood friends, released a self-titled album where
Pitchfork recognized how "Shauf has diligently refined his storytelling
during the last decade.”
The Party earned a spot on
the Polaris Music Prize 2016 shortlist and launched Shauf to an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden as
well as glowing accolades from NPR, The Washington Post, The Guardian,and more. "That LP was
a concept record and it really made me want to do a better album. I wanted to
have a more cohesive story," says Shauf. Where the concept of The Party revealed itself midway through
the writing process, he knew the story he wanted to tell on The Neon Skyline from the start. "I
kept coming back to the same situation of one guy going to a bar, which was
basically exactly what I was doing at the time. These songs are fictional but
it's not too far off from where my life was," Shauf explains.
For The
Neon Skyline, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of
his usual piano. He says, "I wanted to be able to sit down and play each
song with just a guitar without having to rely on some sort of a clever
arrangement to make it whole." The resulting album finds its immediacy in
simplicity. While the arrangements on folksy "The Moon" are unfussy
and song-centered like the best Gordon Lightfoot offerings, his drive to
experiment is still obvious. This is especially so on the unmoored relationship
autopsy "Thirteen Hours," which boasts an arrangement that's both
jazzy and adventurous.
Like he's done throughout his career,
Shauf wrote, performed, arranged, and produced every song on The Neon Skyline, this timeat his new studio space in the west end
of Toronto. Happy accidents like Shauf testing out a new spring reverb pedal
led to album cuts like the woozy closer "Changer" and experimenting
with tape machines forced him to simplify how he'd arrange the tracks. Over the
course of a year-and-a-half, Shauf ended up with almost 50 songs all about the
same night at the bar. Though paring down his massive body of work to a single
album's worth of material was a challenge for Shauf, the final tracklist is
seamless and fully-formed.
As much as The Neon Skyline is about a normal night at a bar with friends and
a bartender who knows exactly what you'll order before you sit down, the album
is also about the painful processing of a lost love. Lead single "Things I
Do" examines the dissolution of the narrator's past relationship. Over
tense and jazz-minded instrumentation, Shauf sings, "Seems like I should
have known better than to turn my head like it didn't matter. Why do I do the
things I do when I know I am losing you?" He explains, "a lot of this
record is a breakup record. I haven't had a breakup in a long time, but a lot
of relationships have had one of those nights where one person shows up
somewhere when they weren't supposed to and then picks a fight with their
partner." Elsewhere, songs like "Clove Cigarette" explore the
better times, honing in on a memory that "takes me back to your summer
dress."
With any album about a lost love, the
key ingredient is a generosity and kindness that can only come from a writer as
empathic as Shauf. On the standout personality-filled single "Try
Again," the narrator, his friends, and his ex find themselves at a new
bar. The former lovers' reunion is awkwardly funny and even sweet, as he sings,
"Somewhere between drunkenness and charity, she puts her hand on the
sleeve of my coat. She says 'I’ve missed this.' I say “I know, I’ve missed you
too.” She says, 'I was actually talking about your coat.'" It's a charming
moment on a record filled with them. Shauf's characters are all sympathetic
here, people who share countless inside jokes, shots, and life-or-death musings
on things like reincarnation when the night gets hazy.
On top of heartbreak, friendship, and the
mundane moments of humanity that define his songwriting, Shauf makes music that
explores how easy it is to find yourself in familiar patterns and repeat the
same mistakes of your past. His characters wonder, "Did this relationship
end too soon? Would going to another bar cheer my friend up?" Or in the
case of the foreboding "Living Room," where a character asks herself,
"How hard is it to give a shit?" the songs on
The Neon Skyline ultimately take solace in accepting that life goes
on and things will be okay. Shauf says, "there's moments on the album
where the characters are thinking 'this is the end of the world.' But there are
also moments with some clarity and perspective: Nothing is the end of the
world."
