ANDY SHAUF - Darker Days (CD)

This album is crisp and full of character, easily called a new-folk pop record due to the mounting hooks and layered studio sound, but it's much more. Whether full of layered vocals that feel like an Elliott Smith song cleaned up for a date, or the light picking sounds of an old guitar marking the lessons of letting go, each song retains the original bedroom fuzz - the experiment of an idea in the quick moment - because Andy's musical roots begin there, with the bedroom demos he hid from even those closest to him.