Andy Shauf planned to make a ‘normal’ record. That’s not what happened

Andy Shauf didn’t explicitly set out to make the year’s sweetest stalker-themed “concept” album. The concept just kinda … y’know … crept up on him.

Concept albums in general, of course, have quietly crept in as the norm for Shauf since he first dipped his toe in the format with 2016’s anxious-yet-adorable slice-of-life vignette “The Party” and subsequently, meticulously pursued the art of the narrative song cycle to further degrees of potential — and growing international recognition — on such expertly drawn ensemble micro-dramas as 2020s barroom reverie “Neon Skyline” and its 2021 companion piece “Wilds.”

After a false start on a fourth concept album during COVID isolation, however, Shauf decided to shake things up and make a “normal” record full of “normal” songs and dryly title it “Norm.” Then a creep named Norm unexpectedly introduced himself to Shauf through a tune with a decidedly creepy back end called “Telephone” he’d written as a bit of a joke to see if a friend would “notice that the second half of the song was really sinister” and suddenly, “Norm,” the latest Andy Shauf concept album, was born.

As with all of Shauf’s eight records, “Norm” is a meticulously composed and arranged slice of ’70s-tinged soft-pop, for the most part entirely played by Shauf himself, right down to the woodwinds.

This time the central tale takes on an eerier bent than usual, as the Regina-bred, Toronto-based singer/songwriter delves into the mind of a perpetually stoned stalker — and the imperfect God watching over him — as he pursues his imagined lady love through supermarket and “Halloween Store” aisles down the road toward the inevitably chilling denouement.

Imagine Elliott Smith or Paul Simon in a Hitchcockian mood after spending too much time with David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” or, say, Christopher Cross lurking in the bushes outside your window in a soiled raincoat and you’ll get an idea of the mad genius at work here. The fact that Shauf had to bring in a story editor to make his latest batch of ideas cohere properly speaks to the scope of his ambitions this time around.

“There was a point in writing songs where, I guess, I just got tired of writing about myself,” said the soft-spoken Shauf this past Tuesday, shortly before a tour date down the highway in London. “I found a lot of creative freedom in writing fictional songs and just, like, the idea that you can kind of do anything and take a listener anywhere you want to or anywhere that you’re able to take them to by telling a story in a song. I found that interesting. It’s very challenging but I enjoy that, the challenge. And when I realized that I could start to link songs together, that was even more fascinating and felt like even more of a challenge. It just kind of ended up being this thing that I really wanted to try to do more with.

“I like when something demands attention, like a movie that you watch and you have to watch it again before you really understand what’s going on. With records, it’s tricky because if it’s about nothing or if it’s about something you’re probably not gonna catch it the first time. So I just liked the idea for this one of having it be a story that isn’t going to reveal itself on the first listen. It might, to a certain extent, but you’re gonna have to revisit it if you want all the details … I feel like my last record was such a direct narrative that when some of the songs stood on their own they didn’t have the same effect, so this time around I was trying to think about it in a bit of a different way, where they can stand alone or as part of a puzzle. It’s more like a puzzle than a linear narrative.”

There’s now a transatlantic Cult of Shauf more than willing to take up the challenges to the listener posed by his immaculately detailed, highly literate recordings.

He and the five-piece band currently bringing “Norm” to life — complete with flutes and clarinets — on the road will head overseas for the next leg of a 50-date world tour after headlining Massey Hall in Toronto today, while the album itself has garnered enthusiastic praise from publications as far-flung as Pitchfork and Steregum to Paste and Mojo to Variety and Vanity Fair. Even Barack Obama is a fan, having included the title track from “Neon Skyline” on his 2020 summer playlist

The modest Shauf is slightly taken aback by all the attention, not to mention the enormous billboard sporting his face that greeted visitors to Parkdale — mere steps away from the Skyline diner that inspired the stories found within Neon Skyline — during the weeks leading up to and immediately following “Norm”’s February release.

“I was gone for the whole time that it was up, but it was weird when friends would, you know, send me a picture of it. I was, like, ‘Ugh. That’s a little overbearing,’” he laughed, conceding that he’s still a little awed that so many people are interested in the strange little worlds he conjures through music.

“It’s amazing. This is my job and that’s pretty crazy. I don’t know if I would have imagined that. At a certain point you get busy with touring and stuff and you just can’t have a job because you’re too busy and then, yeah, you look back at a certain point and realize, despite all the things that annoy you about this job, it’s your dream job and you’re livin’ it. It’s kind of wild that people want to listen to my records at all.”

Though he’s firmly planted on the touring treadmill through the spring and into the summer, the 35-year-old Shauf — who decided to quit drinking after a misguided attempt at making a disco album during pandemic lockdown — is now intent on dialing the workload back a bit in an effort to achieve “a better work/life balance.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to not tour endlessly and sort of focus the touring a little bit more. I just want to spend a little more time at home. If it’s possible,” he said. “I think before the pandemic it was kind of ‘head down, just grind through it.’ But with that time off you kind of realize the things that are important to you or the ways that drowning yourself in work isn’t helpful for the future of your life and the things that get neglected when you’re too focused on one thing. So, yeah, I’m trying to focus on things that allow for more of a healthy lifestyle, I guess, and a healthy mind. And body, too. We’re doing this run in a Sprinter and I forgot how hard it is on an aging man’s body to sit in a van all day. My back is not happy about it.”

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