‘Norm’: Andy Shauf’s sweet, creepy postmodernist masterpiece
It’s all well and good judging a book by its cover, a book has never stalked anyone, but when it comes to people, you should be a little more cautious because appearances can prove deceptive. Andy Shauf muses on music’s potential to mask an unreliable narrator’s creepy conceits behind mellowed and magnetic melodies. In the process, the crooning Canadian chansonnier’s seventh album, Norm, offers a beguiling come-hither with beauty, entraps with odious depth, and then leaves you reeling with the subtlest of postmodernist prescience in these times of rampant deception and misguided Norms aplenty.
Shauf has seemingly never raised his voice above much more than a whisper in his career to date. He carries that cute style over onto Norm’s opening ditty, ‘Wasted On You’. It’s a lulling opening that exhibits his constant knack of seamlessly whisking instrumentation into a textured melody that sets toes-a-tapping by hacking into human’s encoded involuntary biology. But the title carries a sinister portent that our satiate body cells fail to heed—too subsumed by the flirting wink of a whistling tune and mind-drifting medicine of a refrain that tugs you away from the dreary day towards a dreamier disposition. For all its sunny sighing, “Wasted on you” is a rather selfish way to look at the pursuit of love, or as we may find out, a spurned obsession.
The second track continues that tact. ‘Catch Your Eye’ takes Shauf’s musical pillow-propped virtue to wistful new heights. As hushed as a breeze through leaves that sounds closer to silence than a sound, this adult lullaby to soothe the passing of a missed connection is as sweet as spiritual honey. But with closer inspection of the lyrics, this is clearly no girl-on-the-train what-could-have-been situation—missed connections of the classic innocent variety shouldn’t come with the line, “I followed you all the way to your door, but you never did turn.”
This masterful contrast of sinister undertones and earnest lovelorn stylings is a sign of the excellent storytelling that Shauf has always exhibited. His meek humility has perhaps prevented reverence for him from reaching lofty heights despite the high esteem he holds in the private rooms of many, but at this stage, it really is safe to say that Shauf is one of the finest songwriters performing at the top of their game today.
Without saying as much, his tracks offer depth that allow the listener to make corroborations beyond the words or tone. While ‘Wasted On You’ might have been a summery offering, conjuring the notion of a sad fellow swinging his feet at the end of a pier, ‘Catch Your Eye’ captures the sepia tones of sleepy twilight. Dressed in the same suit of hopeless romanticism, this soothing song of longing hints at an album brimming with a bit of lovesick hysteria. And that’s the beauty of Norm, we’re only two tracks into this review and there is already much to discuss, but by the same token, you can switch off and let the harmonious mix just wash over you.
When commenting on the new record, Shauf explained: “The character of Norm is introduced in a really nice way. But the closer you pay attention to the record, the more you’re going to realize that it’s sinister.” In a postmodernist twist, the sweet soundscape hides the menacing meaning in a blanket of unreliable narrator amorousness. But it also relates that to our times, twinkling technological tones, and references to the insular age of TV, paint a picture that acts as a portent for the potential dangers of loneliness in the internet age and our misguided attempts to escape it without any empathy.
In the brilliant title track, even Shauf himself steps into proceedings, urging the character he created to stop watching The Price is Right and cooking up crooked schemes for one-way love, in a manner reminiscent of the late, great literary master Kurt Vonnegut. But he also approaches this matter without cynicism, which is pretty much the height of his artistry—Shauf looks to find the human in the inhumane, and unlike a lot of troubling faux true crime today, he presents a crook who could do with a bit more empathy shown his way too.
Once more, it is this sort of creativity that establishes him as the new indie answer to Randy Newman. Norm is a devilishly clever album resplendent with resonant notes that make dissonance seem like a silly flourish deployed by the uninventive. Instead, Shauf remains pleasantly peaceful and lets his wit do the ruffling. With it, he reaches the same lofty heights as the brilliant Neon Skyline. With a bit more time getting to know the oddly nefarious Norm, it may even surpass it. And that’s saying something. Superb stuff from Shauf, one of the year’s finest efforts so far.
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