THU May 15, 2025

ALL AGES

Doors 7:00 p.m.

Ask Chris Farren how he feels when he finishes an album and he won’t hesitate to respond with: “Miserable. Miserable. Miserable.”

At least, that’s how it’s been over the years he’s been writing and recording solo. When the time came to make a record, Farren would be overtaken by an unparalleled anxiety, forcing him into the home studio he describes as “barely bigger than a closet,” where he agonized over the minute details of his work in progress. “Looking back on those records… I have no good memories of making them,” he admits. “It’s always been a lonely, doubt-ridden process.”

It’s surprising to hear this, knowing Farren’s reputation as a prolific songwriter who made his name recording with Jeff Rosenstock in Antarctigo Vespucci and before that, the Floridian punk band Fake Problems. In 2014, Farren started releasing music under his own name all while continuing his project alongside Rosenstock, and his first album, Like a Gift From God or Whatever endeared him to fans of the now-defunct Fake Problems and new listeners who had yet to experience the delight of a new Chris Farren song. Like a Gift From God or Whatever was followed by Can’t Die and Farren’s Polyvinyl debut, Born Hot. Last year, Farren wrote what he describes as a soundtrack to a spy film he invented that will never be committed to film. Inspired by Marvin Gaye’s soundtrack to Trouble Man, Death Don’t Wait (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) was a creative exercise, one Farren completed in mere months that stands apart from the extensive, at times arduous, process of making a Chris Farren album.

Citing My Bloody Valentine, TV on the Radio, and Camera Obscura as clear influences, Farren says he can’t listen to much music until it’s time to make a new record, but when it’s time, he submerges himself in music that moves him. “I wrote between fifty and eighty songs for this album,” he says. The final cut is as genuine, empathetic, and of course, funny, as Farren is, and though he claims nihilistic tendencies, it’s the dogged optimism that endures. On “All We Ever,” Farren compiles a list of things he wants (to stop paying rent, to love the government, to

get drunk with friends) that accumulate into a three-minute reminder that no life is ever pristine, that there will always be wants unfulfilled, and that that’s okay.