Chet Faker is back with another heart-on-sleeve moment.
The ARIA-winning songwriter, producer, and global export — born Nick Murphy — releases “Inefficient Love” today, following July’s “Far Side of the Moon”.
Where that last single dealt with the exhaustion of giving too much of yourself away, “Inefficient Love” shifts the focus to something quieter and more enduring: unconditional love, even when it feels uneven. Over a delicate guitar strum and hushed, layered vocals, Murphy lets his guard down in one of his most intimate performances in years.
“‘Inefficient Love’ was one of those songs that beamed in from somewhere,” Murphy says. “I was sitting on my couch at home watching a show and start playing the guitar and just played the whole song in about five minutes. It feels old and I love it,”
It’s a reminder of how naturally Murphy channels music when he isn’t overthinking it. It’s the same instinct that made his Thinking in Textures EP an instant breakthrough in 2012, earned him five ARIAs with his 2014 debut Built on Glass, and later led to collaborations with Flume and Marcus Marr. Last year, he marked the 10th anniversary of Built on Glass with a sold-out Melbourne Botanic Gardens show and an expanded reissue packed with rarities and live recordings.
“I don’t think I was particularly well built for fame – I mean, who the fuck is, to be honest? – but I am a bit of an introvert, you know?” Murphy told Rolling Stone AU/NZ in 2023. “So I think it just took me this long to process all the shit that came with it. To finally come back and be like, ‘I can make art that I wanna make again.’”
More recently, “Far Side of the Moon” marked his first new Chet Faker material since 2023’s “Something Like This”, while Hotel Surrender (2021) proved a “welcome return” that tapped back into the textures and soulfulness that made his name.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
“Inefficient Love” feels like a continuation of that recentreing; less about spectacle and more about the unpolished truth. In a career marked by left turns and reinvention, Murphy has learned that sometimes the strongest thing an artist can do is strip everything away and let a song stand on its own.
“Inefficient Love” by Chet Faker is out now.
