The April sun in Warsaw isn’t fixing anything. It’s cold out — the kind of cold that makes the calendar feel like a typo. “Faking Life,” the new single from For Example John, doesn’t care. It’s the most chaotic riff guitarist Piotr Pietrzak says he’s ever put together, sparked after the band shared bills with French math rock outfit VANR, and today it warms up the room single-handedly.
We’re streaming their new earworm “Faking Life” today — and the entire album it lives on, “failed as a friend,” ahead of its May 8 release.
For Example John‘s second LP is a Warsaw record built on a very specific shift: in 2025, while writing this thing, Pietrzak was listening to a lot more emo than math rock. That tilt is everywhere on the record. The math rock skeleton is still there, but everything around it pulls harder toward emo and punk than the band has ever pulled before.
Lyrically, “Faking Life” is emo in the most honest sense of the word — a song about the exhaustion of performing “I’m okay.”
Aleksandra Banasiak takes lead vocal and runs through a list that reads like an inventory of a bad day: thinking, lying, begging, hoping, hiding, disguising, pretending. The chorus settles into “wearing something like an honest smile / just to look like I’m alive,” about as plain a thesis as the genre allows.
The song is built around that gap between the smile and the person wearing it, and the chorus is the crash.
The album’s emotional center is the title track. “Failed as a friend,” Pietrzak explains, “came from reflections on different situations in my life — emotions that accompanied me, and maybe all of us, in moments when the people closest to us let us down, and also when we were the ones not meeting expectations.” The album doesn’t push that into a hard storyline. It sits as a relatively loose collection of thoughts and emotions translated into songs.
Inspirations are pinned down precisely. For Pietrzak, the most important record of last year is Arm’s Length’s “There’s a Whole World Out There” — and he openly says you’ll probably hear it.
The other defining piece of gear on the record is the Qi Etherealizer, a guitar effect designed by Yvette Young, the band’s biggest musical reference point. It carries “Nothing Will Change,” “Prelude,” “Late Teenage Memory,” “The Fall,” and the tail end of “Back & Forth.”
Doing anything with Young one day is, in Pietrzak’s words, his biggest musical dream — and, he adds, maybe not just musical.
Compositionally, the band aimed at something specific: the album-as-arc model from The Gaslight Anthem’s “The 59′ Sound” and Spanish Love Songs’ “Brave Faces Everyone,” both 10/10 records in Pietrzak’s book.
The vinyl release sealed the format — the record was treated as two sides, with a clear close on “Late Teenage Memory” and a fresh open on “Monologue.”
The drummer brought a different bag entirely. Norma Jean, Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge — that core kick the band had been missing.
And true to the For Example John origin (the project started as collaborations), there are guests, both Polish and international: Germany’s relationship advice on “When the Birds Stop Singing” and Poznań’s septembie on “Back & Forth.”
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Mix and master are coming out of the UK, handled by people working with this style of music day-to-day. The mix is done by The Yacht Club’s bassist, who Pietrzak is bringing to Poland in May for two shows.
Below: every track on “failed as a friend,” with the band’s own notes on what’s happening inside each one.
1. Intro
The album opener does what an opener should — shows what’s coming. “A lot of energy and more backing vocals,” Pietrzak says.
2. No Chance to Repay
The first song the band wrote for the album, not counting the two collabs. “We wanted to do a really energetic one that would still stay in our style,” Pietrzak says. The vocal lines lean on a specific reference: Kasia Kowalska’s work with Loveworms. The bassist hada different challenge: “I did everything I could to eliminate overplaying on this one — the pick is just burning to go.”
3. Every Version of Me
The most experimental track on the album, the only one played live without a metronome and easily the hardest to record in the studio. The bassist took the leaner approach: “The guitar flows so nicely and the drums are so solid that I just decided to follow the snare and kick — and even that was a challenge. I love playing it.” The drummer dropped a jungle/dnb beat under the verse riff: “Beyond all the core genres, jungle/dnb is almost equally important to me. I figured a beat from that genre would be a great touch — and it flows best with the main verse riff. It gave the song a completely new character.”
4. When the Birds Stop Singing (feat. relationship advice)
The first of the two collaborations, this one with German friends in relationship advice. “They got the vibe of the riff perfectly — huge TTNG inspirations, hence the vocal in that direction,” Pietrzak says. “We did it our way though, throwing a punk gallop in the chorus on top of the twisted verse riff and the tapping in the bridge.” The bassist marks it as a live favorite: “The triplets played with the drums on this one — that’s one of my favorite moments at shows.”
5. Nothing Will Change
Broken verse paired with a “simple” chorus, a combination the band keeps coming back to. The Qi Etherealizer carries the verses and the ending. “Try to play a bass line that doesn’t ruin this magically spreading guitar and doesn’t limit itself to root notes,” the bassist says of his approach. “I hope I pulled it off.”
6. Prelude
An instrumental bridge that came out of an improvisation at rehearsals. “The echoes and reverses from the Qi do magic again,” Pietrzak says.
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7. Late Teenage Memory
Pietrzak’s favorite guitar harmony on the entire album, and the closer of Side A. The track is inspired by “Come Home” from Cats and Cats and Cats and Cats — one of his most loved bands.
8. Monologue
“This one’s a shot!” Pietrzak says. “Spoken-word over these kinds of motifs — probably nobody saw that coming, but here we go. It’ll most likely be a permanent show opener.” The bassist hears a different ghost in the bass line: “A floating bass line slightly inspired by King Crimson — curious if anyone else picks up on that.”
9. So What?
On paper it shouldn’t work — too many ideas in one song usually means a mess. The band ran it anyway, pairing the most punk chorus they’ve written with a broken twinkly guitar and what Pietrzak calls “the most pop vocal” on the record, plus screams. The title — “in English I want it to land like ‘and so what?'” he clarifies. The bassist has a recovery story: “Recording the screams I tore my throat for two weeks. I clearly need to practice.”
10. Back & Forth (feat. septembie)
The oldest track on the record. The instrumental was written back in 2024 during the tour for “Hello Stranger.” Their friend septembie from Poznań guests on it. Musically: tapping, odd time, and a huge power outro the band keeps gravitating toward.
11. Faking Life
The track premiering today. “The riff came after our shows with VANR — crazy math rock from France,” Pietrzak says. “I tried to write riffs that would fit the description: the craziest riff I’ve ever put together.”
12. The Fall
The most important track on the album from a compositional standpoint, written with Camp Adventure-era Delta Sleep and Natalie Evans in mind. It gives the listener room to breathe before the album closes, and Pietrzak doesn’t soften how personal it is — its weight has to land. “The vocals at the end give me Sigur Rós vibes — or is that just me?”
13. failed as a friend
The title track, and the most epic close the band could imagine. “We can’t wait to play this one live,” Pietrzak says. The bassist spent more time on this song than any other on the record. “The part where I play threes outside the rhythm of the guitar and drums — that lasts a few seconds — I brought that over from the prog metal I used to play. I came up with so many bass lines on this song it was hard to choose. Usually I just try not to ruin a song, but here I let myself dig in more.”
“failed as a friend” is out May 8. for example John are streaming the entire album on IDIOTEQ today, two weeks before release.
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