The Neon Skyline by Andy Shauf

An Enjoyable Night Out With Andy Shauf

Come to the Skyline; I'll be washing my sins away.

Listening to The Neon Skyline is like a night out at the local dive bar with an old friend or two. A little pleasant. A little sad. Full of inside jokes and somber reminiscing. In fact, that is the exact premise of The Neon Skyline.

Andy Shauf's narrative of a night out may cover the familiar and the expected and the mundane, but it does so with such subtle emotive cleverness. The plot's small-time yet personal stakes and the characters' amiable relatability make for compelling scenes that one can hardly help but follow along attentively for the night.

Andy's delivery has an idiosyncratic quality that meshes incredibly with the album's full, tight, straightforward baroque folk/rock/pop sound. As the story unfolds, each track has a key and rhythm unique to the narrative's mood. Incredibly, that mood reveals itself as quite dynamic despite the seemingly mundane nature of events, but the flow is splendid lyrically and musically.

This makes the Canadian singer-songwriter's sixth album. Though I haven't heard any of Andy Shauf's other records, I'm excited to pour over his back catalog and hope to accompany him on another night out or two.