The new Chet Faker album “Built on Glass” dropped last week on Future Classic and we love it! Below is our review –
Track I – Release Your Problems
The first track opens with a chilled piano/synth intro to get us into the Chet mood, before introducing the vocals with a flourish, complete with drums, echoes and ambience galore. Almost like a one man acapella song, Chet has a track with brilliant vocals building and decreasing all over the chill beat, before fading out.
Track II – Talk Is Cheap
One of the tracks that had been put out on his Soundcloud to stream pre-release, Talk Is Cheap starts with a smooth sax/piano/drums/Chet backing vocals intro to get us into the beat, and then the verse comes in, meaningful and catchy, over them saxes. It flows right into the beautiful chorus that we couldn’t help but sing with on every consequent listen. This is one of our favourite tracks, a proper Chet classic.
Track III – No Advice (Airport Version)
A short acapella-esque track – simple but solid and complete with an atmostpheric intro.
Track IV – Melt (ft. Kilo Kish)
This track opens with a bouncy, electronic style bass with chilled Chet-signature drums and synth chords, before he adds laidback vocals. The verse builds nicely to the chorus, which is pure head-nodding ecstasy complete with crooning vocals and lyrics. The 2nd verse comes from Florida born Kilo Kish, who is most known for her K+ Mixtape featuring Childish Gambino amongst others. Her voice is dreamy, adds to the chill vibe and offers some higher variation from Chet’s deep vocals. A masterpiece.
Track V – Gold
Higher pitched Chet vocals open upon a simple clap beat, which then develops to a head-nodding drum beat and synths. He then switches into his normal lower pitched tone as he enters the chorus. The beat is uptempo without ruining Chet’s chilled vibe and is a perfect platform for Chet to do his thing. It then moves in a completely different direction in the outro, with guitar notes over acapella Chet once again. A purely beautiful track.
Track VI – To Me
The guitar continues with a simple note pattern, backed up with snares, the odd chord and saxophone here and there during the intro. The vocals yet again are completely on target on top of the stripped back track. It then builds with the aid of backing vocals around the 3rd minute mark into what we feel might be an anthemic chorus, but Chet keeps us surprised by moving straight into a slow, fading outro. Another class track.
Track VII – /
A 19 second filler interlude featuring nothing but a soundclip from an old sounding radio program.
Track VIII – Blush
This track opens with another standard Chet beat – laidback synths and drums, before Chet vocals come in. They are soon interrupted by a saxophone/drum/piano build, which is another head-nodding, uptempo instrumental. Acapella vocals come in from Chet, with echoes galore. It fades to what feels like an outro, before the instrumental is brought back; this time with backing vocals before a refrain of the original verse. This track is different and we love it.
Track IX – 1998
Kaytranada-esque style bouncy bass opens this with looped backing vocals, before becoming a bassy, synthy drum beat before Chet opens with deep vocals, meaningful and complete. A similar beat to that on Drop the Game from his collab. with Flume on the Lockjaw EP, we were head-nodding at all parts of this drum and synth inspired track, although the beat takes nothing away from Chet’s outstanding vocals, full with a story. It then starts to fade from about the 4 minute mark but the outro is equally sublime.
Track X – Cigarettes & Loneliness
The track builds from a strange intro that features some cowbell type bell and guitar, but the cowbell soon fades to reveal Chet’s vocals – almost like talking in this song at the start but it builds and backing vocals are introduced. The cowbell comes back during the instrumental during the mid-section that is quite uptempo before it settles back to the vocals. No outro on this track, just a sharp stop. Not one of our favourites but there’s nothing wrong with it all the same.
Track XI – Lesson In Patience
Another slightly strange song with wailing vocals that we found irritating, They dominate the 1st half of the track and to be honest we found them almost unlistenable, but things returned to usual very high Chet standards in the 2nd half, which is a brilliant instrumental.
Track XII – Dead Body
A very smooth, chilled track – very laidback and Chet did his thing over the top, which was great as per usual. The best feature was an old school surf guitar featuring throughout, especially in the outro that takes up the last minute or so – a sublime outro that ends an, on the whole, brilliant album.
The Verdict –
All in all, we love this album on the whole, especially brilliant songs like 1998, Talk is Cheap and Melt but we feel the really high quality of most of the tracks is let down by tracks like Lesson in Patience and in parts, Cigarettes and Loneliness. However, if you haven’t bought it, go and buy it! Minus the 1 or 2 aforementioned tracks, it is a musical masterpiece of originality and talent.
We gave it – 4/5
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