Foxwarren is a band whose ethos feels like a dream, drifting in and out of existence like the sun peaking out from behind a cloudy mist. The Canadian quintet formed 15 years ago, releasing their first project, Has Been Defeated, in 2011 before disappearing into the aether and leaving room for frontman Andy Shauf to break ground with his solo material. The band re-emerged in 2018 with Foxwarren, a wistful treasure trove of folk-rock packed to the brim with crisp production and airtight songwriting. Foxwarren struck a proper balance between the ethereal and concrete, never ceasing to sound like a band of old friends jamming but always gesturing toward a fantasy existing just beyond the tangible. Soon after the record, however, the band once again vanished, promising music on the horizon before retreating into silence for nearly a decade.
It took seven years to release their next project, 2, but Foxwarren were hardly idle during that time. Shauf dropped three more solo records and embarked on numerous tours, while the band actively contemplated where their next steps would lead. They recorded a follow-up shortly after Foxwarren but scrapped it after some reflection, opting for a new approach to collaborating as a band. Instead of recording live, members Colin Nealis, Dallas Bryson, Shauf, and the Kissick brothers, Darryl and Avery, worked individually and uploaded fragments of song ideas into a shared folder. Shauf took those short phrases and mashed them up with other sounds in a sampler, exploring what possibilities a more hip-hop/electronic approach could yield. The band convened weekly to build ideas, assembling an unorthodox collection of indie-pop/soft-rock recordings.
2 shows Foxwarren in a new light, retaining the alluring, somewhat-mystical quality of the band’s sound while embracing tunes decorated in boxy loops and fragmented vocal samples. The record exists in a haze, conjuring scenes from forgotten romance films and merging novel production with vintage aesthetics. The result is warm and inviting, calling to listeners from a distant beach like the one pictured on the record’s cover. Songs like “Yvonne” gesture toward such a setting directly by employing a sample of squawking seagulls, while the warm guitar riff and colorful strings on “Sleeping” exude the lightness of a summer’s day, both anchored by propulsive drum ‘n’ bass loops. The latter song features one of the strongest lyrics on the record (“Everything that you say is sounding so true / I keep nodding my head forgetting I can’t understand you”)m communicating feelings of being swept up in infatuation while reinforcing the dreamlike, untethered talk of relationships in the album’s sonic undertow.
The album is at its strongest when it leans into its own mysticality, sounding old-fashioned and contemporary simultaneously. Opener “Dance” is an invitation to let loose—piano and drum loops propel the tune forward while strings and vocal harmonies elevate the melody and add more lush, sweeping movement. As the song evolves, different clips appear and vanish, and the space left by the departure of percussion is as powerful as the momentum generated when they collide.
This technique colors much of 2, where subtle changes to arrangements of samples lay the foundation for the songs’ overall structures. Interlude “True” is brief but remains sweet and fuzzy, while closer “Again&” utilizes manipulated field recordings that beckon familiarity yet end abruptly, like being rudely awoken from a blissful fantasy. Is that a dog barking? Is it a man laughing? The indiscernible audio emulates a distorted memory, illuminating a long lost moment that feels within reach but is still too garbled to make out clearly. The penultimate track, “Serious,” sounds like an open window, creating a fog behind found sounds and pitched-down vocals.
“Havana” contributes a different cut of sentimentality, opening with an old piano that rings out into waves of synthesizers. The track is only a minute long but packs a big punch, haunting in a way that recalls M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. It’s in the slow crescendo, underpinned by a buzzing synth and slowly enveloping more space, that builds the song around a short, evocative melody. On “Listen2me,” Foxwarren attempt a rootsy pivot that’s more disjointed than disarming. The bluesy guitar riff is somewhat gutless, and lyrically Shauf lingers too long in unfounded bravado, repeating the line “When I’m singing, you should listen to me” while making it clear that the protagonist doesn’t listen back. Lyrics like “Though I’ve not been listening to what you’ve been saying” and “I have no formal training on the current subject” reveal the character to be unlikable, but there’s no compelling spark.
2 is often sweet, but many of its catchier moments aren’t distinctive enough to stand out as the tracklist chugs along. “Round&round,” with its looped groove and string section similar to many other tracks, runs out of steam, and the concluding modulation does little to help commit the song to memory. It’s an unsettling contrast to Foxwarren’s self-titled effort, which was a more consistent display of infectious songwriting on big-guitar and sticky-refrain songs like “In Another Life,” “Sunset Canyon,” and “Fall into a Dream.” 2 is a collection of fleeting moments that cohere nicely but don’t always linger after impact. The songs are collaged together by a thread of loose narrative fragments, which effectively set the scenes but don’t cohere into a fully tangible story; such a throughline isn’t necessary when listening to individual moments, but the music leaves something to be desired when experiencing the record as a whole. It’s a commendable experiment—and there is certainly room for more creative sampling in rock and folk music—but 2 struggles to come across as anything but a transient work from Canada’s most elusive band.
David Feigelson is a freelance music writer and producer based in Twentynine Palms, California.
