Andy Shauf is driving us out to a wild and dangerous place. Norm, his new album out February 10th on ANTI-, is a recognizable Shauf production, but with a flowing landscape of suppressed grooves propelling the songs toward uncertain destinations.
After gaining indie notoriety with The Party and a Polaris Music Prize nomination, Shauf has left the realm of things he’s known on his third album, pivoting away from the semi-autobiographical, and pushing himself to grow as a songwriter in an entirely different way. With Norm, Shauf has upended his songwriting methods, creating a deeply haunting and unpredictable universe. He’s tackling love and loss on a more panoramic, extreme scale, but Shauf feels the album is consistent with his earlier focus on small, intense encounters. He uses these close-ups to devastating effect, keeping us focused on the tiny connections between lonely creatures, while raising the stakes on the action to existential levels.