‘NOTHING’S FAKE’ barely lets you settle before it starts messing with you. Opener ‘Walk, Choose, Wait, Think’ goes straight in with screeching electronics and a hard-hitting chorus, a bizarre, ethereal, evasive club vibe that could only be Jersey. That unique fingerprint they’ve summoned and maintain across these tracks is a definite draw. In a world this saturated with music, a truly distinct approach that scratches a specific itch isn’t easy to find, and brothers Carl and Renaud’s distorted vocals, abrasive textures and big beats make their music unmistakable within seconds.
Brothers Carl and Renaud’s distorted vocals, abrasive textures and big beats make their music unmistakable within seconds
Over thirteen tracks, nearly every dance subgenre gets a look in, but hyperpop is the dominant force. The pair don’t think in binary terms themselves and see themselves as only adjacent to the scene, but the key characteristics are all there: hyperactive tempos, heavy bass and a maximalist pile-up of sounds. Much of that vocal distortion is deliberate, built from AI models trained on each brother’s voice and then pitched, twisted and cut up for texture rather than to generate songs wholesale. Half the vocals belong to collaborators, but the brothers put their own voices on every track, which is a big part of why a record this restless still hangs together.
‘Obsessed’ is a declarative lead single, a fairly self-contained euphoria that sets out the project’s stall. ‘U&I’ is perhaps the peak of the whole album: it has the bittersweet glow of a summer winding down, the sunset moment before everyone heads out, but also the buzz of a night with friends that is only just starting, and it is easy to imagine it soundtracking a whole season.
The record isn’t all uncomplicated joy. ‘Big’ misses the innocence of youth and the simpler emotions that adulthood makes harder to find, one of the more melancholic songs Jersey have made and a genuinely open one, though the tempo never drops, a pounding beat driving an otherwise chilled soundscape. ‘Breathe’ turns anxious and paranoid, spiralling into a feverish drop, and ‘I Wanna Jump’ sets a sombre vocal over a ripping bass sound before a glitchy melody takes over the chorus.
Elsewhere, ‘Nobody Can Know’ is carefree and non-stop, the thrill of a forbidden moment that never gets boring, while ‘Yolo’ crams its hyperactivity into a minute and a half. ‘Fake Or True’ is one of the record’s very best, slick and built around an earworm melody, and its title poses the album’s central question outright: what is real, what is not, and whether it matters at all. The brothers think that question is already becoming outdated, so turning it into a hook feels like a wink rather than a lecture. ‘Just To Hear A Sound’ is the one real exhale, a mellow track whose semi-outro tips into an eccentric final third and transitions straight into the next song, a sign the pair know exactly where they are going. Not every track adds something entirely new, with tracks like ‘Fool For You’ offering the Jersey staple delivered on schedule, but the cohesion is undeniable.
‘Goodbye’ closes things with one final mic drop, a farewell note on what is without doubt their biggest and most ambitious project to date. There is plenty here that hasn’t been fully deciphered yet, and that is part of the appeal. ‘NOTHING’S FAKE’ is hard to move your attention away from, Jersey’s enthusiasm proving infectious and anything else becoming secondary.
