Foxwarren

No one in Foxwarren has ever made a record quite like 2. The Canadian quintet, built on 20 years of friendship, ostensibly plays folk music, where warm tones and cantering rhythms buoy songs of characters wrestling with existential quandaries inside of twilit vocals. But after touring their lauded 2018 self-titled debut, Foxwarren decided to do it all differently, eventually dropping the familiar band-in-a-room routine to instead plug those songs, and various other sounds into a sampler. The result is mesmerizing and uncanny, an album that traces two sides of a relationship through 37 minutes of collage art that aspires to “sound best blasting out your car window” as put by singer Andy Shauf. To understand how Foxwarren got here, it’s best to understand where they started. During the last decade, Andy Shauf has become known as a uniquely imaginative and precise storyteller - a perpetually restless songwriter and musician, always using some fresh fascination, skill, or concept as the catalyst for albums he would write, play, and produce almost entirely by himself. These ever-evolving interests are evident from 2016’s The Party through to 2023’s Norm. But before Shauf’s solo acclaim, he was a member of Foxwarren, which initially consisted of Shauf, fraternal rhythm section Avery and Darryl Kissick, and guitarist Dallas Bryson. Foxwarren’s debut arrived almost an entire decade after the formation of the band. It was released in late 2018 on ANTI-, and quickly became a fan favorite. They found momentum through solid reviews and beloved live shows, immediately overcoming any suggestion whatsoever that this was just a side project. Multi-instrumental ace Colin Nealis—a member of Shauf’s touring band—officially joined Foxwarren after their summer touring in 2019. Riding a crest of enthusiasm, the band headed into the studio in October of the same year, hoping to cut a half-dozen songs for a follow-up rather quickly. Given a little distance, though, the songs felt flat. So Foxwarren opted to try something entirely new: In their own home studios across four provinces, all five members would upload song ideas, melodic phrases, or rhythmic bits to a shared folder. In Toronto, Shauf would then plug these into a sampler and construct songs from the fragments supplied by his bandmates, leaning into classic hip-hop techniques and musique concrète alike as unlikely lodestars. Foxwarren would convene at weekly online meetings, offering long-distance suggestions about which way a song might shift. It was neither a fast nor an easy process, but 2 became an uncanny revelation for Foxwarren, a rock band allowing itself to be sampled in order to become something else. They warped and pushed the florid folk-rock of their past until it evolved into a song cycle about the vagaries of love, where voices sampled from the past commingled with songs that sparkled with the power of their collective imagination in the present. It is a fun and surprising record, where boundaries between genre and song are constantly blurred. Avery Kissick kickstarted the process, uploading a mound of drum takes for the others to plunder. Bryson used one such fragment as the basis for a tune that would eventually be called “Say It.” When Shauf heard Bryson’s melodic vocal turn, he was inspired, lifting the melody and placing it over broad new bass notes dissolving between piano stabs, singing of romantic doldrums in a tone rising just above a whisper. Bryson completed the song with a halting guitar solo, suggesting the search for some new language. The band upped the ante by weaving a trove of found-sound conversations between two lovers into the songs, interstitial bits that advance the story but also raise intriguing questions about where songs begin and end, how one melody might fade into another. These aren’t chances supposed “folk-rock records” take; they delight and so animate 2, always prompting you to wonder how this story might evolve from here. There is something uncanny about the feeling of these songs, the way bits recorded in different home studios amplify your attention, looping and interlocking. But the true connective tissue is the generous and gentle way Foxwarren’s 2 moves with melody. The woodwinds, piano, and drums of opener “Dance” intertwine like some soft-pop fantasy, a perfect platform for an endearing plea for shared connection. “Yvonne” is a compulsory study of love’s strange spell, Shauf setting the scene above a loping Laurel Canyon rhythm. The vocal harmonies hitting the string section feels like watching the sun rise in someone else’s eyes. Foxwarren’s quest for levity is evident in the song “Deadhead,” which somehow moves from an MF Doom-like pitch-shifted sample to a line-dance guitar lick to honeyed country-rock harmonies of the titular band all in three minutes. There are darting flutes, mangled electronics, and meticulous snippets of rhythm, all expertly placed to illustrate the song’s emotional tumult. “I won’t stop dancing,” is exactly how it feels. A bit of borrowed dialogue offers the title phrase of “Listen2me,” before a guitar riff and bounding rhythm cut in to repeat themselves, spinning around again and again while Shauf relays a loud-mouthed lover’s quarrel—who is paying attention to whom, who is interesting or exhausting. And then there’s the way “Serious” plods on purpose, extending the bickering contest between lovers. This inevitable moment unspools into fitful samples and slow drones, the disorienting end of the affair, at least for now. By himself, Shauf has already had a stellar career, his reputation built not only by the sweetness of his melodies and sharpness of his words but also his inability to rest with past success. Foxwarren, especially here, is a crucial part of that ongoing process, but 2 represents something even more significant—five friends now nearing the end of their second decade making music together, pushing against what they’ve learned how to do in order to venture somewhere new. It is the sound of friends who trust each other, cutting themselves loose from their past and their preconceptions to have some fun with a sampler and the very idea of songs.