Foxwarren is Andy Shauf, Avery Kissick, Darryl Kissick, Dallas Bryson, and Colin Nealis. 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. 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. All ages