In 2015, Peter Vartanian moved from Milwaukee to Tasmania, Australia, to take a job at the Museum of Old and New Art as an invigilator. No, he wasn’t familiar with the word, either. It’s a British term that basically means “one who keeps watch,” and the job entailed watching over gallery visitors and a lot of telling them not to touch the art. During his time in Australia, he met a girl, fell in love, lobbied to get her a visa so she could come back to America with him and failed. He returned alone just weeks before the November 2016 election to a country that was about to feel very different from the one he left.
Vartanian chronicles that journey on his new album under the moniker Fauxny, Invigilator. For all the sadness in his story—a tale of lost love and, in a sense, a lost country—the music on Invigilator is bright and exploratory—pop at its most jubilant. Vartanian’s voice channels Michael Jackson over the nimble R&B of “Sydney,” and when the production takes on a more modern, electronic edge on “Backseat Bogan,” it gives off echoes of The Weeknd. “Question Mark Spaces” exudes the joy of classic Stevie Wonder, while “Old Milwaukee,” with its beat-boxed rhythm and Auto-Tuned harmony vocals, plays like a contemporary reimagining of Paul Simon’s Graceland.
If Invigilator’s jovial spirit seems out of step with the times, that’s by design. “I wanted to set a mood that reflected positivity rather than this general mood of anxiety,” Vartanian said. “When people listen to my music, I want them to realize the process of making it was fun. We were having a great time; there’s humor in it. That’s one thing I really took away from Australians. We’re very serious in America. We respond to humor or sarcasm skeptically, but Australians are much more willing to be self-deprecating.”
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Vartanian recruited a variety of collaborators to complete the album, among them, Old Earth’s Todd Umhoefer and Golden Coins’ Travis Whitty; vocalists N’Jameh Camara and Siân Ross Whitney; trumpeter John Rose and saxophonist Blaise Garza—the latter a Tasmania resident who currently plays with Violent Femmes. They lend a celebratory, communal vibe to an album that’s ultimately about the importance of looking beyond yourself. Especially on the record’s second half, Vartanian holds a mirror to himself and calls himself out.
“It’s not too ‘woe is me,’ but I wanted to acknowledge my own flaws and poke fun at the typical privilege of being a white, straight male,” he says. Even the band name Fauxny, he says, is a reflection of his growth. It’s a play on Holden Caufield’s signature grievance in Catcher in the Rye, a book that spoke to Vartanian deeply when he began the project as a teenager a decade ago but has come to mean something different to him as an adult.
“Holden Caufield was brought to life by his angst, which is why kids connect with that book when they’re younger,” Vartanian says. “He can spot what’s wrong with the world, but these days, I don’t relate with the character as much because he’s not taking steps to do anything about it. In 2018, my takeaway is that it’s not good enough to sit and complain about what’s fake and what’s real in this version of America. I feel like people need help, and they need guidance—I certainly needed guidance as a kid. And that’s why I do music. I’m doing music because I want to help people.”
Fauxny’s Invigilator is streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.
