In every Andy Shauf review, reviewers always seem to want to bring up Elliott Smith but I just don’t hear the comparison. I saw Elliott Smith perform just once – when he opened for DC hometown heroes Tsumani – and I thought it was just “sad old b*stard music”. After repeated listens, I still don’t come away from Andy’s music with the weighty sense of melancholia that I do after listening to Elliott Smith so I would suggest that better points of comparison are Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake.

When I originally reviewed Shauf’s Darker Days, I didn’t realize that the disc had been available in some form for the past four years. Andy’s latest EP, “Waiting for the Sun to Leave”, is an 8-track, 25 minute basement recording of songs that Andy has been playing live for the last few years. Each of the songs prominently features Andy’s soulful vocals and he accompanies himself on acoustic guitar. There are light backing vocals and additional instrumentation on some of tracks but the connection point for most listeners is likely to be Andy’s mini-vignettes/narrative lyrics.

Similar to Darker Days, the lyrics for “Waiting for the Sun to Leave” are reflective and introspective. The songs capture snapshots of people, moments in time and changing relationships. As the eight tracks are all stylistically similar, Andy’s latest video for the song “Open” should provide a good sense for the sound of this album.



Here is a live video that I filmed at Andy’s recent stop in Brooklyn, right before the new EP came out. Andy is one of the few artists that I’ve seen who can capture the same sense of “living room intimacy” in both the studio and a live setting.



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