Andy Shauf Returns with Cinematic, Heartbreaking ‘The Neon Skyline’

Breakup albums are a dime a dozen, but Andy Shauf’s is different. The Neon Skyline takes us along for the bumpy ride of heartbreak in all its minute and excruciating detail. Like he did with his 2016 breakout The Party, Shauf has created a concept album with The Neon Skyline, only this time, it’s even more tightly constructed. Each track is a vignette, a cinematic snapshot of a memory of a relationship’s ups and downs, set to Shauf’s signature smooth, melodic arrangements that can be as boppy as a Monkees tune or devastatingly sad.

Shauf’s songwriting deeply embeds listeners in the painful oscillations between good times and terrible ones, between vindication and humiliation. The songs on The Neon Skyline make us blush, feel shame, or even get angry when he does. The record moves somewhat chronologically, though it switches between present day and flashbacks. It all begins like any normal night, on the album’s opening title track, as Shauf’s narrator heads out to meet friends at his local watering hole where Rose, the bartender knows exactly what he needs without him even needing to order. Then his ex walks in.

Shauf fleshes out characters like a great novelist, and his associations with smells, colors and touch are vivid. On “Clove Cigarette,” the titular smell takes him back to a sweet, tender summer moment. On “Fire Truck,” sirens make him recall a night when he got stood up. Through it all, he finds ways to pepper in intricate little melodies that stick in your brain, particularly on “Fire Truck” and “Where Are You Judy,” in which he first hears his old lover is back in town. Shauf never misses a beat as he captures the conversations between his characters, from the awkward to the mundane. Things grow especially tense in “Thirteen Hours,” which is full of such a specific kind of intimate resentment between two people, and “Try Again” finds a bit of loving sarcasm and flirtation in a drunken exchange between exes.

“Things I Do” lives smack in the middle of the record, and in so many ways feels like its emotional center. A climactic confrontation, it finds Shauf’s hero anxiously questioning all the decisions made in the relationship. It is a banal slice-of-life, but it’s also a high-stakes moment of intense self-reflection, regret and doubt. Shauf makes us want to give the guy a big hug, even as we’re cringing for him. The Neon Skyline provides us with all the anticipation and investment of binge-watching a great TV show.