There’s now a transatlantic Cult of Shauf more than willing to take up the challenges to the listener posed by his immaculately detailed, highly literate recordings.
The fact that Shauf had to bring in a story editor to make his latest batch of ideas cohere properly speaks to the scope of his ambitions this time around.
Imagine Elliott Smith or Paul Simon in a Hitchcockian mood after spending too much time with David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” or, say, Christopher Cross lurking in the bushes outside your window in a soiled raincoat and you’ll get an idea of the mad genius at work here. This time the central tale takes on an eerier bent than usual, as the Regina-bred, Toronto-based singer/songwriter delves into the mind of a perpetually stoned stalker - and the imperfect God watching over him - as he pursues his imagined lady love through supermarket and “Halloween Store” aisles down the road toward the inevitably chilling denouement.
The concept just kind of … you know … crept up on him.Ĭoncept albums in general, of course, have quietly crept in as the norm for Shauf since he first dipped his toe in the format with 2016’s anxious-yet-adorable slice-of-life vignette “The Party” and subsequently, meticulously pursued the art of the narrative song cycle to further degrees of potential - and growing international recognition - on such expertly drawn ensemble micro-dramas as 2020s barroom reverie “Neon Skyline” and its 2021 companion piece “Wilds.”Īfter a false start on a fourth concept album during COVID isolation, however, Shauf decided to shake things up and make a “normal” record full of “normal” songs and drily title it “Norm.” Then a creep named Norm unexpectedly introduced himself to Shauf through a tune with a decidedly creepy back end called “Telephone” that he’d written as a bit of a joke to see if a friend would “notice that the second half of the song was really sinister” and, suddenly, “Norm,” the latest Andy Shauf concept album, was born.Īs with all of Shauf’s eight records, “Norm” is a meticulously composed and arranged slice of ’70s-tinged soft-pop, for the most part entirely played by Shauf himself, right down to the woodwinds. Andy Shauf didn’t explicitly set out to make the year’s sweetest stalker-themed “concept” album.
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