Faker have today released their new album titled ‘Enjoy Your Problems’. There are comeback albums, and then there are albums that stroll back into the room fifteen years later like they merely went outside to buy cigarettes. Faker’s ‘Enjoy Your Problems’ belongs firmly in the second category. After a decade and a half away, Nathan Hudson returns with ten tracks that sound remarkably uninterested in making excuses for the absence. Instead, Faker has come back with a record that understands the most important rule of indie rock: if life is going to be messy anyway, you might as well put a decent guitar line underneath it. ‘Enjoy Your Problems’ is new wave tinged, emotionally restless, occasionally bruised, and considerably more fun than a record about existential complications has any right to be.
‘Comet’ immediately establishes the atmosphere, floating somewhere between melancholy and momentum while giving the album its own gravitational pull. From there, ‘Frida’ and ‘Trustfall’ keep things moving with the kind of melodic confidence that makes you wonder why more bands do not simply write songs this good and then stop overthinking everything. Hudson’s voice carries a cool, slightly haunted quality that brings to mind the grand tradition of dramatic alternative frontmen without turning into karaoke night at a Cure convention. There is vulnerability here, certainly, but Faker wisely refuses to wrap it in twelve layers of self importance. The songs feel lived in rather than staged, which is increasingly rare in a musical landscape where everyone apparently has a dissertation about their feelings.
Then comes ‘Nightmare’s Coming Back,’ which sounds like exactly the sort of title you would expect from someone who has spent fifteen years wrestling with the brain’s least cooperative tenants. It is followed by ‘Goldmine’ and ‘Partner In Crime,’ and suddenly the album starts revealing its real strength. These songs do not treat personal struggle as some precious artistic accessory. They turn it into motion. There is heartache, uncertainty and plenty of internal noise, but there is also wit and rhythm and a willingness to keep going. ‘Partner In Crime’ in particular feels like the emotional center of the record, while ‘1 TRK Mind’ and ‘Nothing Else Here’ keep the album from becoming too comfortable in its own melancholy.
What makes ‘Enjoy Your Problems’ especially satisfying is how naturally Faker balances the personal with the listenable. This could have been an album buried beneath its own emotional paperwork, but Hudson has instead assembled something immediate and surprisingly infectious. ‘Doubt’ carries the appropriate amount of suspicion, while ‘Heavens’ brings the record toward its conclusion without pretending every problem has magically packed its bags and moved away. Good. Nobody needed that kind of resolution anyway. Across songs that were assembled from ideas gathered across multiple cities and continents, Faker has created something that feels less like a carefully polished comeback vehicle and more like a musical scrapbook that somehow learned how to dance.
Fifteen years is a long time between albums, particularly in alternative music, where the cultural landscape can change approximately seventeen times before lunch. Yet ‘Enjoy Your Problems’ does not sound like a band desperately trying to prove that it still belongs. It sounds like Faker has returned because there were still songs worth making, problems worth examining, and probably several bad decisions worth turning into choruses. That is the charm of the album. It is reflective without becoming miserable, nostalgic without becoming trapped in nostalgia, and personal without demanding a standing ovation for being vulnerable. Faker may not have figured out exactly where home is yet, but on ‘Enjoy Your Problems’, they have certainly found a pretty compelling place to hang out.
Featured image by Clayton Boyd.
About ‘Enjoy Your Problems’
A record about facing inertia, attempting love, risking survival, and coming through it singing, Enjoy Your Problems is Faker frontman Nathan Hudson’s comeback after a fifteen-year hiatus. With a vocal cadence mirroring The Cure’s Robert Smith, Faker untangles his issues over ten prolific new-wave-tinged tracks. Speaking openly about his experiences as a queer musician diagnosed with AuDHD, Nathan Hudson condenses these feelings into palatable moments designed to move audiences.
A decadent mixture of new wave-tinged indie rock tracks, Faker’s Enjoy Your Problems comes to fruition whilst battling years of executive dysfunction and ADHD. Describing his experiences in raw and unfiltered ways, the newest record untangles these niche navigations through life as a queer musician. Condensing his feelings into palatable moments designed to move audiences, the new record guarantees feelings of heartache, soul-searching, and the carefree ability to be one’s unique self amidst a world pressuring those to conform.
About Faker
A defining act of Australia’s alternative rock scene in the early 2000s, Faker broke onto the scene with the addicting hit single “This Heart Attack”, which received accolades including becoming the most broadcast Australian song of 2008 and reaching #5 in triple j’s Hottest 100. Having headlined sold-out tours and shared stages with The Black Keys, Iggy Pop, The White Stripes, Arcade Fire and P!nk, Faker’s unique breed of post-punk influenced alternative rock comes to a head with today’s release of Enjoy Your Problems.
Faker has always had a revolving lineup, and this album embraces that fact, always putting the song first. “Comet” became its north star, “Partner In Crime” its beating heart, and “Nightmare’s Coming Back” its conflicted psyche demanding long-overdue attention. The record was written, recorded and assembled across Sydney, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, São Paulo, Hong Kong and Mexico City, then mastered in Tasmania. Hudson describes the process as living like a bowerbird, collecting ideas, planting them in cloud and moving from city to city while figuring out what or where home is. He still hasn’t figured it out, but he’s happy with that.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/otherfaker/
https://www.facebook.com/fakermusic
https://www.youtube.com/user/Fakermusic
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0RaO9p4AomXaVUXzV8SPVW