Andy Shauf: An Observer On The Edge Of 'The Party'
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Written by Huw Baines
All that's left of the evening are its embers. It’s a heavy-lidded scene; certainly not a sober one. His glass is filled, he tosses it back. He dances to the radio with Martha, who’s pretty just like his ex. All too easily he slips into reminiscing. Martha spins, he catches her hand. Her laugh pulls him back into the room. Back to ‘The Party’.
Andy Shauf’s new record is a patchwork quilt woven from stray observations. Our narrator finishes the evening in Martha’s arms, but his orbit is a circuitous one. He exists on the margins, observing and, occasionally, interjecting. While entire conversations are lost in a haze of liquor and the familiar faces of “a city the size of a dinner plate”, Shauf comes alive in the specifics of the gathering.
He sees a guest, “over-dressed and under-prepared”, arrive early enough to stress out the host, another quite literally dancing like nobody’s watching. He hears secrets, drunkenly engages in ill-advised relationship espionage and shares in sombre stories with people who already know the bleak punchlines.
"Some of them aren’t stories at all, they’re just songs about my life. I can pretty much relate to all of those situations."
“That was what my life was like,” Shauf says. “I was spending a lot of time at parties. I didn’t have the idea right away. It just kinda happened. A lot of the songs I’d written were based around drinking or situations where there was drinking.
"I realised I had a bunch of songs in that respect, so I tried to finish it off by making some narratives around it. Some of them aren’t stories at all, they’re just songs about my life. I can pretty much relate to all of those situations. You see that stuff happen at parties. Strange decisions…”
One such song is the raw Twist Your Ankle, which recounts the aftermath of Shauf being particularly honest and it not going his way. “Everybody’s laughing at me,” he sings. He is a shy person and throughout ‘The Party’ the accompanying anxiety is captured at the edge of the frame. His is often an outsider’s viewpoint, informed by his life in Regina, Saskatchewan, a city in which his musical enclave is surrounded by “farm kids and football fans”.
‘The Party’ focuses on characters who are either comfortable in the familiarity of their world or made queasy by it. Shauf’s previous outing, ‘The Bearer of Bad News’ was also located on the Canadian prairies, but that album channelled its energy into outlaw tales and an atmosphere cribbed from old country traditions. This time around he is treading in tracks left by great storytellers like Randy Newman or his compatriot John K. Samson while conjuring rich, sleepy textures that owe much to the singer-songwriters of the ‘70s.
“Randy Newman can bring someone to life in a minute and a half and throw them into such a vivid place or situation,” Shauf says. “I really wanted to make a ‘70s sounding record, I was going for a Steely Dan kind of sound. It wasn’t quite deliberate but that sound lends itself well to the end of an evening. My songs are always a little bit slower. I tried to make this my upbeat pop record, but it’s still a kind of lazy end of the night record.”
When recording, Shauf is a solitary creature. ‘The Party’ was tracked at Studio One in Regina, with every note, bar Colin Nealis’ strings, played by his own hands. It’s a step removed from the basement recordings that made up ‘The Bearer of Bad News’ and has genuine warmth and scope to its sound, with Shauf wandering between instruments and sharing a screen between his laptop and the control room.
"I usually filter it through friends along the way. I don’t feel like I can entirely trust myself or my friends, but you know…"
“A lot of it was me,” he says. “Trial and error, going through different parts and figuring out what I liked. At the end of the night I usually had a couple friends come by and ask them what they thought. I usually filter it through friends along the way. I don’t feel like I can entirely trust myself or my friends, but you know…
“I really enjoy working on my own, at my own pace. I feel like I get a little self conscious working with other people, or a little bit defensive with my ideas and trying to flesh them out. It’s easiest for me to just work an idea all the way to the end of it and decide if I like it without someone getting bored or looking at their watch.”
‘The Party’ is the sort of album you can get lost in. Its world is tiny but almost impossibly detailed, while each song is deceptively complex and quietly beautiful. From stray glances to fuming anger and hints of the apocalypse, it leaves behind strands that might go on existing long after its last lyric stops hanging in the air.
'The Party' is out on May 20 through ANTI-.
Andy Shauf Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed May 25 2016 - LONDON Bush Hall
Thu May 26 2016 - BRIGHTON Hope and Ruin
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