Sam Fang
It’s not all that uncommon for artists to disappear. It’s more rare that they come back. For Australian alternative rock act Faker, the gap between their last project lasted fifteen years, but the wait is now over.
The band returns today with Enjoy Your Problems, a new album that finds frontman Nathan Hudson reckoning with inertia, love, survival and the complicated process of figuring out who you are when the world keeps asking you to be someone else.
It’s a interestingly different kind of comeback story from the usual “long-awaited return” that artists typically try to manufacture. Rather than attempting to recreate the sound or momentum of Faker’s early-2000s heyday, Enjoy Your Problems embraces the years that have passed. The result is an album steeped in new wave and indie rock, with Hudson drawing on his experiences with executive dysfunction and ADHD alongside his life as a queer musician.
The album’s title feels pretty much like a mission statement, and it’s one that definitely deserves to be shared. Life doesn’t necessarily become easier with time, and sometimes you simply get better at learning how to live with the problems you’ve accumulated along the way – even if it takes 15 years.
Faker Returns with a Different Kind of Comeback
Faker first made their mark on Australia’s alternative rock scene in the early 2000s, eventually breaking through internationally with “This Heart Attack.” The song became one of Australia’s most recognizable alternative hits, reaching No. 5 on triple j’s Hottest 100 and becoming the country’s most-broadcast Australian song of 2008. No small feat, especially for an alt-rock band.
Faker went on to tour extensively and share stages with artists including The Black Keys, Iggy Pop, The White Stripes, Arcade Fire and P!nk. With those memories now in the rearview mirror, Hudson is returning with a record that sounds less interested in reclaiming the past than in figuring out what comes next.
Enjoy Your Problems was written, recorded and assembled across an almost absurdly wide geographic footprint, traveling through Sydney, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, São Paulo, Hong Kong, and Mexico City before being mastered in Tasmania. Talk about global appeal.
Hudson describes the process as living like a bowerbird: “collecting ideas, planting them in the cloud and moving from city to city” while trying to figure out what, exactly, home means. He still hasn’t figured it out, but he’s okay with that.
“Partner In Crime” Offers a Taste of Faker’s New Era
With ten tracks in all on Enjoy Your Problems, Faker has slowly been feeding fans new music in recent months. “Partner In Crime”, which first debuted back in May, offers perhaps the clearest introduction to the new era.
The track carries a distinctly new wave-inflected sound, with Hudson’s vocal delivery drawing comparisons to The Cure’s Robert Smith. It’s a fitting choice for a record that appears equally interested in melancholy and movement, songs about navigating difficult emotions without allowing those emotions to completely consume you.
“Partner In Crime” also sits at the center of the album’s own mythology. According to Faker, “Comet” became the record’s north star, “Partner In Crime” its beating heart and “Nightmare’s Coming Back” its conflicted psyche.
That’s a lot to ask of three songs, but it provides an intriguing roadmap into what Enjoy Your Problems is attempting to accomplish.
Faker Are Still Figuring Things Out
What makes Enjoy Your Problems particularly interesting isn’t necessarily the fact that Faker are returning after fifteen years. It’s the circumstances surrounding that return. Hudson’s descriptions of the record repeatedly circle around movement, identity and uncertainty. The album’s songs explore everything from heartache and relationships to survival and the pressure to conform, while his experiences with ADHD and executive dysfunction inform the record’s broader themes.
It’s a remarkably contemporary subject matter for an artist whose history stretches back to the early-2000s Australian alternative scene, proving that Faker’s artistry is able to mature and grow while still infusing early 2000s nostalgia with modern production and themes.
A fifteen-year hiatus is long enough to completely change a person’s relationship with music, identity and even the idea of home. Enjoy Your Problems seems to embrace that uncertainty rather than attempting to resolve it, and that more than makes it worth the wait.
Enjoy Your Problems is available now on all streaming platforms.
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