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The expression you wear when dads in the audience are yelling your song titles like stadium chants. Colin Medley

The crowd in attendance to see Andy Shauf, at Revolution Hall on Monday, was a little too antsy for a seated performance. You could hear it in the quips that a variety of dads and browned-out-drunk boyfriends yelled throughout the evening. Portland, when you yell “Jerry Garcia” at soft-spoken, Saskatchewan singer songwriter Andy Shauf, it makes me feel like you think I came here to listen to you. And that’s just not the case.

Back to the show: Shauf’s sixth, recently released record The Neon Skyline is an incredible work of pop-folk songwriting. I’ve likened it to a Raymond Carver book because the album’s lyrics loop in dialogue from characters in a bar, over the course of a single evening, unfolding an unobtrusive narrative of lost love and a sudden, unexpected chance at reconciliation that grips a careful listener by the heartstrings.

On The Neon Skyline’s first song Shauf sings “Looked in my fridge / it was a dark scene / so I buttered some bread” before the album's central narrator heads over to a bar named the Neon Skyline—actually named after a bar Shauf frequented in Toronto—to meet up with his friend Charlie. This song, the eponymous “Neon Skyline,” was what Shauf and his band opened with, and they played the record's tracks exactly as they are on the record, in album order, for the first few songs.

It would have been fine for Shauf to play the entirety of The Neon Skyline like that. I always want something unique from a live performance, but I also have a healthy respect for how accurately Shauf recreated his record for a live show, especially considering his comments in a recent Paste interview about how difficult it was to take his previous—likewise incredible— 2016 record The Party on tour.

The Party was a layered, studio-focused album which explored the multiple perspectives of people attending the same party. This concept still blows me away, and I thought it was the coolest thing possible, until I heard The Neon Skyline while walking home from a show on a dark, gently misting Portland night—the ideal circumstances to really pay attention to everything happening on the new record.

Shauf played most of his live set semi-obscured in shadow. The gel-covered lights, which transitioned Revolution Hall’s auditorium from bright blues to tender reds to warm purples, were set up behind the players, hindering close observation. And boy did the audience what to know what Shauf was playing.

Perhaps due to the complicated effort of perfectly replicating The Neon Skyline, Shauf and his band paused after nearly every song to confer and rally for the next number. But the antsy audience could not abide these brief pauses and soon began to heckle uncomfortably. Shauf, as he tuned his guitar, asked if anyone had any questions, which led to an unconventional Q & A portion of the show that never fully subsided.

One person set off a good exchange by shouting, “Is Judy mad at you?” to which Shauf replied, “Judy’s not real. If Judy were real she’d be fucking pissed.” Further strained queries led Shauf to reply that Charlie is real. And Rose, the bartender, might be real.

FUTURE AUDIENCES, HEED MY WISDOM: If you don't have a good question, you don't have to say anything. The question of Shauf's favorite color was posed and ignored several times. Audience dads asked super-specific questions about guitar tunings, the details of which were lost over the din.

Though he invited the exchange, most of Shauf’s replies were comically brief (“Was it hard to write your record?” “Yep.”) This has been Shauf’s interview style for as long as I’ve been following his work. His recent Reddit AMA was full of gearheads trying to figure out what equipment he uses, while Shauf politely evaded too much detail, mentioned he likes pilsners, and obliquely explained that he works really hard on all his songs. This seems appropriate for a songwriter who can turn on astonishing depth with terse lyrics like “Charlie looked at me with wide eyes / like we had accidentally walked into some stranger’s living room.”

A little after the halfway mark, Shauf and his band ventured into material from The Party, and those songs were more distinct from their record versions. They rounded out the evening nicely for anyone (me) less interested in perfect reproductions. What Shauf brought to the stage was focused, controlled, and enchanting. Under ordinary circumstances, I should’ve been lulled into—as opener Molly SarlĂ© put it—“the warm glow of the Shauf.” I wanted to be. But my ding dang neighbors jerked me out of that mellow zone with their near-constant audience crimes, ruining Shauf's carefully orchestrated live show vibe.


Andy Shauf's latest record The Neon Skyline is out now on ANTI- Records.