2

A casual listener could be forgiven for not being able to distinguish Foxwarren’s self-titled 2018 debut from the celebrated solo albums that its frontman, Andy Shauf, releases under his own name. Though he’s the sort of singer who rarely raises his voice above a casual-conversation murmur, Shauf can’t help but sound like anyone but himself, thanks to that instantly recognizable folksy twang in his voice and a signature storytelling style that masterfully toes the line between comedy and tragedy. But with the second release from Foxwarren, Shauf’s long-running but sporadically active band with his childhood pals from Saskatchewan, this avowed Randy Newman disciple has started taking notes from GZA. With Foxwarren’s five members spread across four provinces, Shauf turned to sample-heavy ’90s rap classics like *Liquid Swords* for guidance on how to stitch their isolated parts together into a cohesive statement. The result is an album that brilliantly blurs the line between traditional ’70s-singer-songwriter craft and cinematic sound collage. Where a tender serenade like “Dance” could’ve easily been presented as a stripped-down piano ballad, here it’s situated within a splendorous swirl of mutated strings, flute loops, and gently drifting rhythms, like a dreamy remembrance of some bygone Hollywood golden-age musical (an effect enhanced by the snippets of found-sound dialogue threaded throughout the record). And with the mellotron-smeared grooves of “Strange,” the glam-rock swing of “listen2me,” and the disco-house motion of “Wings,” *2* bottles up all the energy and excitement of old friends who’ve discovered new ways of unlocking their creativity. Close listeners of Shauf’s work know that, beneath the sad-sack surface, his writing can be very funny—but, for the first time, it sounds like he’s truly having fun.

On Foxwarren's 2, Andy Shauf long-distance reconnects with his original band and assembles an album that helps them recapture their place in the indie scene.