Andy Shauf Is Everyone’s Favorite Drinking Buddy on The Neon Skyline

Listening to an Andy Shauf album in full is akin to binging a particularly compelling TV show: Both pull you in with characters that feel just as real as you or me, who populate a world we’d like to escape to. It’s a world not unlike our own, but that’s part of the appeal, really. Shauf’s storytelling and uncanny realism have long been the linchpin of his appeal as an artist, though his previous release, The Party, showcased his talent on a whole other level. As a concept album, it documented the titular event, exploring vignettes about all of the party’s various attendees.

Now, Shauf is following up his 2016 effort with The Neon Skyline, another concept album about a couple of friends on a night out at the pub. Every aspect of the central storyline—an ex randomly showing up after moving out of town, bad jokes, drunken ramblings—feels like it could be happening at your local dive just a couple blocks from your apartment.

The intimacy of the story is bolstered by the album’s production and Shauf’s deft instrumentation. In comparison to the expansive sound of his recent work with indie four-piece Foxwarren, the woozy woodwind, warm piano and guitar (all played by Shauf himself) come across as if they are being played in the small back room of a bar. This is certainly by design (he wrote the songs on guitar first) and makes an LP that tugs at the heartstrings all the more moving.

The title track quickly introduces us to the broken-hearted narrator, his perpetually tardy friend Charlie and the bar itself, The Neon Skyline. It’s a testament to Shauf’s selective word choice that, with very little by way of actual description, we easily feel like we’re on a barstool next to the pair of pals, catching up over a drink. The entire album follows this trajectory, with nary a word feeling out of place or like it’s taking up too much space. Scenes start, they end and seamlessly, things move on.