2

While not a complete renunciation of their 2018 eponymous debut, the second album by Foxwarren -- singer/songwriter Andy Shaufs band with friends from college -- represents a surprising shift in approach. Whereas the debut consisted of a trippy, pastoral indie rock, the follow-up, titled 2, was put together by Shauf after bandmembers, located across four Canadian provinces, collected song ideas and musical fragments in a shared folder. Citing musicians like MF Doom as inspirations, Shauf plugged these ideas and others into a sampler and, along with field recordings and movie clips featuring dialog and score material by the likes of Max Steiner, pieced together, hip-hop style, a primarily melodic sequel that plays a lot like a rap-era mixtape. What remains similar between the bands albums is Shaufs unmistakable warm, tempered vocals and a sense of melancholia that acts like a glue, both across this track list -- 15 songs and interludes that clock in at around 35 minutes -- and the entire output of the project. Sounding very much cobbled together but also maple sweet, it opens with "Dance," an orchestra-injected midtempo contemplation about wanting to dance, with looped piano, light live (-sounding) drums and bass, occasional flute, and a closing fanfare. Its followed by the funkier, breakbeat-adjacent "Sleeping," which credits 1947s Life with Father for its symphonic music samples, alongside movie dialog including the track-opening "Im leaving in the morning, honey, Ill be gone a long time…." The rest of 2 continues in kind, with excursions into the period, stereotypical-Asian-noir-sounding score samples of "Strange" preceding the manipulated orchestra samples of the film-centric "Havana," which in turn leads into one of the most tuneful, solo-Shauf-like entries here, "Yvonne," whose accompaniment includes muffled drums and seagulls. Also on deck are the more classic rock-leaning, relatively upbeat "Deadhead" and the clap-along disco of "Wings." By the arrival of the glitchier closing track, "Again&," 2 has come off as just a bit too haphazard and like editing practice to be fully immersive; however, its bittersweetness and unusual, playful spontaneity are, like Shauf, not without their charms. ~ Marcy Donelson