The artist (again) known as Chet Faker on the mystery of his Hotel Surrender album and long Covid

Through the symptoms of a mystery illness and New York’s pandemic crisis, new songs just wouldn’t stop coming for Chet Faker.

It took months before Nick Murphy was finally able to run again.

The Australian singer and songwriter known as Chet Faker is revelling in shedding his pandemic pounds with a daily jog across the Manhattan Bridge, as he prepares for an American tour to launch his new record Hotel Surrender.

The 33-year-old artist, who has been based in New York since the release of his breakthrough debut record Built On Glass eight years ago, made his “accidental” album during the city’s Covid crisis last year.

It’s been a strange year for Chet Faker. Picture: Supplied

But somehow between cycling between his home and his new studio, it appears he caught the virus and suffered the brain fog, depleted B12 levels and associated symptoms of “long Covid”.

“I didn’t know I had Covid. I was getting all these blood tests and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me; they said I was just tired, it’s just anxiety and the only thing they could find was I had really low B12, which of course has to do with the immune system,” Murphy says.

“But I kept telling them that I’ve lived in this body my whole life and it wasn’t how it was meant to be.

“Then all these medical articles started coming out about long Covid which described my symptoms to a T.

“The brain fog disappeared after I got the vaccine.”

Hotel Surrender reflects Chet Faker’s myriad moods. Picture: Supplied

Murphy extolled the benefits of a morning dance session when we spoke after the release of his Music For Silence record last year.

But he’s not personally tested out the danceability of Hotel Surrender’s singles like Feel Good and Get High in his new New York pad.

“The other reason I don’t dance in the morning is because I don’t have curtains yet. There’s offices over there outside my window and people don’t want to watch me dancing shirtless in the morning,” he says, laughing.

“I like to dance when nobody is watching. Dancing is not my calling; I’m a bit self-conscious about my dancing.”

Murphy, who reverted back to his Chet Faker artist name for his latest record, was wholly unselfconscious about making it.

Knowing he was releasing Music For Silence in March last year, he had no intention to make a new record when his manager found him a studio space in January 2020.

His only mission was to leave home every day, jump on his bike with his laptop, sit down at his keyboard and see what happened, no matter his mood or headspace.

“I tapped into this zone of just going to the studio every day and enjoying myself – I hadn’t had my own space to work in like that since I made Built On Glass,” he says.

“And when the end of the world came along, it seemed to supercharge the concept of surrendering to what was happening in the moment in the studio. And the songs came flying out.”

By mid 2020, he suddenly realised he had an album’s worth of songs. And it felt like a Chet Faker record rather than a Nick Murphy one, so he resurrected his artist name.

He knew fans and critics would scratch their heads about him switching back to his artist moniker after dispensing with it in 2015 to record and perform under his birth name.

But he couldn’t deny the synchronicity between his Built On Glass debut and the effortlessness of making Hotel Surrender.

“The music just showed up. It really wrote itself, hands down the most enjoyable and fluid record I’ve ever made,” he says.

“There was no tension in this at all, so it did feel like starting from scratch.”

Murphy is one of dozens of high profile Australian artists who have followed the well-trodden path to pursue their musical dreams on the other side of the world.

“The music just showed up” Chet Faker says of his surprise new record. Picture: Supplied

Flume, Troye Sivan, Sia, Kevin Parker and Nick Littlemore, alongside hitmakers Sarah Aarons, Alex Hope, Jon Hume and Dreamlab have either permanently based themselves in the US or split their time between America and home.

Murphy’s initial motivation to shift bases was to cut down on travel. When Built On Glass was released in 2014, it hit No. 1 in Australia and firmly established him on the independent charts in the UK and US, opening up a raft of touring opportunities.

“I was on this endless tour. I would get weekend shows and I would spend two days in an aeroplane to play one show. And then I would spend the next week jet-lagged,” he says.

“So it just wasn’t feasible for me and from New York, Europe is seven hours away, anywhere in America is within five hours.

“And there’s also the draw of this cluster of psychic energy of Manhattan, which is just the craziest place. And that’s back now (after Covid) but it’s way more gritty than it was.”

Hotel Surrender is out on July 16.