Since emerging as the co-founder, vocalist, guitarist and lead songwriter of The Early November in 2001, Ace Enders has been incredibly prolific. As well as eight albums with the band, he’s helmed seven records through solo products with the eight on the way. With so much to say musically, it’s not surprising that he’s articulate about his lyrics and creative process too. Here we explore Enders’ new material and background.
Wide Awake
The new Ace Enders single, Wide Awake, is candid, and so is Enders in explaining it. He says “this song begins with sleepless nights – lying awake, restless, and anxious. I started to drink a lot heavier at this point in my life. Not proud of it, but I guess needed it to write this. The lyric replacing windows with bars pretty much sums it up.”
The song contains aching realisations about what has been lost: “a version of who I used to be, wide-eyed with undying belief.” Yet the tone and tempo of the song gradually rise as Enders balances dark realities with ultimate hope.
Enders explains: “As it unfolds, it shifts. Slowly the darkness makes way for light, and the anxiety becomes anticipation. By the end, it’s no longer about being trapped by thoughts but about waking up wide awake with something to look forward to.”
Damaged Goods
Damaged Goods is another confessional single from Ace Enders’ latest album. He explains “I was having one of those heavy days where I felt left behind and forgotten. Instead of going home, I stayed in the studio until midnight and wrote Damaged Goods. It came from that dark place – the feeling that your best days and biggest opportunities might already be behind you. When you can see everything in the rearview but the windshield is foggy, things get weird.
But in writing it, I realised there’s still hope even in those moments. Happiness can come from knowing someone else might learn from your mistakes. And if you’re lucky and are willing to learn how to clean the fog, maybe you even get another shot.”
Heavy
Heavy is one of those songs that benefits from knowing the background: “It’s about my experience in the industry. This one is bittersweet. It’s about staying on a path for so long that you forget how to turn back, or if you even can. It’s like waking up 20 years in and realising the mistake you made in year one is still haunting you. You can deny it, but the weight grows heavier with every step forward. That’s life. Bittersweet.”
Ace Enders’ new solo album Posture Syndrome
“At its core, the album is about loss, learning, letting go, and trying to find hope. It’s complex, like everyday life, where we’re all just trying to hold it together while pretending to be the version of ourselves that others will dislike the least. From music business, fear of AI making me obsolete, being old, social media…all the things. That’s where the name Posture Syndrome came from,” Enders explains.
The new Ace Enders album is out on October 31, 2025, on Pure Noise Records. You can pre-order Posture Syndrome now, including some rather fetching limited-edition vinyl colour variants.
Why did Ace Enders go solo?
Following The Early November’s success in the 2000s as a Drive Thru Records leading light, Enders experienced the pressure of feeling creatively stifled to meet fans’ expectations by staying within genre and style limitations, and the push to compromise artistic integrity to be commercially successful.
Desperate for more creativity and experimentation, Enders began with the solo project I Can Make A Mess (formerly I Can Make A Mess Like Nobody’s Business) in 2004, then Ace Enders and A Million Different People, and then he continued recording simply under his own name.
Over the last two decades he’s released seven full length albums as a solo artist, toured with bands like All American Rejects, and had his music featured in the trailer for the film Must Love Dog
Ace Enders will be playing songs from his latest album in the U.S. on tour with The Spill Canvas and Mae on select dates this autumn.
Posture Syndrome by Ace Enders – Tracklist
- Posture Syndrome
- Alaska
- Recede
- Dark Weather
- Almost Awake
- Strings of Light
- Damaged Goods
- I Was An Ocean
- For What It’s Worth
- Where I Stand
- Heavy
- Smoke Signal
- Forty Eight
- Term Life
- Wide Awake
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