Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf released Norm, his eighth studio album, via Anti- Records in February. Andy is soon on tour, and he performs at 9:30 Club on Monday, April 24!
With Norm, Shauf upended his songwriting methods, creating a deeply haunting and unpredictable universe. “Telephone” follows the “jaunty” and “existential” (Stereogum) lead single “Wasted On You” and “Catch Your Eye,” in which “a dreamlike serenity is undercut with unsettling desperation” (New York Times).
Shauf hates talking on the phone, so imagining someone different, he wrote “Telephone.” “I wish you’d call me on the telephone,” he begins in a half-whisper, “I want to hear your voice // reaching late into the night.” The song’s yearning intensity goes to unusual places.
The accompanying video, animated by Chad VanGaalen, features a returning character from Shauf’s “Catch Your Eye” video and offers a fantastical continuation of its predecessor’s plot.
Watch the official music video for “Telephone” by Andy Shauf on YouTube:
Norm’s story takes shape through little epiphanies, accumulating like debris from a series of implosions. Its cast of characters includes four voices in all. Three are narrators, inside whose perspective Shauf submerges us for one or more songs. Alongside story editor Nicholas Olson, Shauf refined Norm’s narrative until he felt the bones of the story as he imagined it lay close enough to the surface to be dug up by anyone who wanted to go looking. With Shauf singing everything, it’s not always obvious at first whose point of view is represented in each song. But the lyric sheet provides discreet clues to know whose voice we’re hearing at any given moment. Only through repeated listening does the story fully reveal itself.
Shauf wrote, performed, and recorded the entire album and enlisted Neal Pogue (Outkast, Tyler, The Creator) to mix. Pogue took Norm’s sonic framework in a new direction, one with a greater sense of clarity and lots of space. Listen closely, and deep in the music, a shift happens as the world goes sideways. The tempo slows, vertigo slips in, or a discordant note appears. An uneasy clarinet phrase devolves into a busy signal. A lyric veers from a bird’s-eye-view to intimate thoughts. The result is a recognizable Shauf production but with a flowing landscape of suppressed grooves propelling the songs toward uncertain destinations. He’s driving us out to a wild and dangerous place.
Andy Shauf
W/ Marina Allen
9:30 Club
Monday, April 24
Doors @ 7pm
$25
All ages