Andy Shauf
Norm
ANTI-
Andy Shauf’s singing voice is rounded and soft, like an ice cube melting on all corners at the bottom of a warm glass. The Saskatchewan-born songwriter made a name for himself with the 2016 wallflower concept album The Party and the local watering hole episode that was 2020’s The Neon Skyline. His style of indie-pop scripting is deep in thought about past mistakes, darkly humorous, and rich with details in almost every scene. On his sixth album, Norm, Shauf continues to stub out his standby concepts of interpersonal trauma like used cigarettes. There are only four central characters that appear throughout the 12-track album—a meager shift from previous records that often were Altmanesque ensemble pieces huddled in one location.
Shauf’s songwriting adheres to the Terrence Malick model this time around. Norm has more of an open canvas for each participant to get lost within and add their own colors. Shauf started on this path earlier: On 2021’s lo-fi Wilds, we saw scattered postcards of dislocated romance, while The Bearer of Bad News in 2012 also meandered in its melancholia. Transcending his past mistakes, Shauf stopped drinking during the pandemic. There seems to be a calm acceptance falling over most of his music now. It can make for some of the most relaxing sounds you’ll hear in this busy world, though some may cut Shauf’s quaint daylight dreaming as pure listlessness.
This album continues Shauf’s rainy-day lounge phase with contrails of his typical clarinet and guitar zooming over his melodic voice as a rising marine layer of synthesizers continues to make further inroads into his discography. Shauf calls it his “normal album”—hence the title—but it’s anything but that. The title track is a piano fever dream whispered to a character laying on his side, clutching the sofa, and watching The Price Is Right. The scene reads a lot like God trying to win back a straying follower by the lyrics alone. It’s a theme made far more overt with the opening track “Wasted on You” and its comical music video.
Norm’s quartet of characters travel all over the psychographic map, but the scenes are less epic in scope this time, with Shauf using a fine focus throughout. The protagonist of “Telephone” wants to hear a lover’s voice, and “Halloween Store” lenses its character’s mundane day like it’s a high-speed chase to finish a seasonal to-do list. “Paradise Cinema” and “You Didn’t See” feel like two stalker scenes, one in a theater, the other during a “clear cool night.” There’s something shadowy about this record just under the surface that draws you in track by track.
Norm may not be a normal album by any stretch of the imagination, but the quiet beauty of life can be found here. You rest, wake up, and rest again, and the normality in between can often capture some beautiful and devastating moments. Andy Shauf just records it.
