Fake Problems – Real Ghosts Caught On Tape

I knew I liked Real Ghosts Caught On Tape from the first moment I heard it. I got it and threw it in the car as I drove to my friend’s house. In the drive there I only had time to hear one song – ADT; but it hooked me. Mainly it was the line “If confidence is key, I must be locked out of the house; if home is where the heart is – I do not have a pulse.” Mainly I loved that line because, quite frankly, I misheard it. As I said, I was driving so I wasn’t paying full attention and only heard “If confidence is key, I do not have a pulse” and the self-deprecation had me sold.

But it was only last week when I saw Fake Problems live that I realized how much I really liked the album. As the band played through their set, they only played two old songs – the rest of the thirty minute set was comprised of songs from this album and somehow I had every single song memorized.

Somehow the album sunk into my memory banks and without realizing it I knew every single word – even the words to 5678, the weakest song on the album due to its overly eccentric dance vibes.   For you see, Real Ghosts is a catchy, fun, pop album and that’s not a bad thing.

On Real Ghosts, Fake Problems have stepped into their own shoes. They’ve left behind the folk-punk leanings that they began on (which, I know, is slightly disappointing) and embraced a sound that is specifically their own.  It’s more polished, producer Ted Hutt made it more accessible but not overly so as it relies on the Wall Of Sound style of music that Phil Spectre popularized. Chris Farren’s vocals are no longer rough and worn, but calm and collected as he sings in his own voice leaving any trace of Tom Gabel behind. There’s a sixties pop vibe threaded throughout, pushed even further on Soulless that has some fantastic guest vocals from Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat and Mae Whiteman.

The songs have a contradictory thematic theme flowing through.  Topics of self-doubt, introspection and lack of confidence appear continually and I, for one, continually eat it up. “It’s a shame all the ways we build ourselves up just to let each other down” they sing on Songs for Teenagers and Chris Farren lazily croons  “What’d you do when I was gone? I pretty much just hung around. Did you get any work done? I said no, I just hung around. I’ve got a lack of motivation, a lack of ambition. I sit and watch the fire burn and wish I could burn with it” on the mellow closer Ghost to Coast.  Yet, the album isn’t a depressing burst through self-destruction, there’s a moment of hopefulness and honest that sneak through in almost every song that lets you know that everything will be alright. Take the singleSoulless and its enthusiastic chorus of “I was soulless, soulless/ Broken down / Hollow as a ghost/ But you have brought me back to life / And revived the hope” or RSVP’s central chorus “The future is brighter than we’ve ever known now that we are on our own.” Farren sings everything – the hopeful and the downtrodden – with confidence and determination.

Real Ghosts Caught on Tape may not have the same raw power as How Far our Bodies Go and is more controlled than the twists and turns of It’s Great To Be Alive but it’s still definitely Fake Problems. It’s just Fake Problems delivered with sixties pop sensibilities.