Father John Misty’s records can veer from the deeply romantic (2015’s I Love You, Honeybear) to the arch (2017’s Pure Comedy) – or perhaps it is that Josh Tillman deals in a kind of arch romanticism. Either way, something shifted on 2018’s pared-back God’s Favourite Customer, a subtle gem that explored an interesting kind of restraint.
Restraint is something that comes to mind on this, Tillman’s newest record, its evocative title suggesting that Tillman is in nostalgic mood. Is it for the 20th century? Or any period that is simply not right now? Tillman’s distaste for certain elements of the present day is palpable, and, as he prods the circus of outrage and idiocy with wry narratives on everything from painkiller addiction to misery memoirists, he ploughs rich terrain.
The idea of restraint here is interesting, given that there is a real sonic lusciousness at work also, producing an often dazzling if at times discomfiting effect. Genres meld and bend, from a country inflection here to a Weimar-era Kurt Weill nod there, yet nothing seems too pastiche, or laboured.
Chloë is Cole Porter meets darker George Gershwin, and Goodbye Mr Blue brings to mind Harry Nilsson’s version of Everybody’s Talkin’, with lyrics about a dead pet and jangly folk thrown in for good measure. Kiss Me (I Loved You) is a crumpled sigh of a song, complementing the lovely waltz of (Everything But) Her Love, and Buddy’s Rendezvous is drenched in radiance, meeting Q4 in all of its hazy, glacial beauty. The louche, library records-infused bossa nova of Olvidado (Otro Momento) melts into the epic orchestration of Funny Girl, and Only a Fool is all tremolo guitar and spindly fiddle; it is an atmospheric jaunt.
We Could Be Strangers is (perhaps unsurprisingly) blackly comic, and with its moody bass and elegant brass, it lands like alternative incidental music from a Twin Peaks episode. Seven-minute album closer The Next 20th Century is truly epic. Seeking clarity, it lands in doubt, as Tillman worries about the point of creating art, considering the horror in the world. “Who will watch the chorus line stretching from Reno to Rome?” he muses, amid thoughts of the “severed head of love”, and other apocalyptic concerns. With a savagery behind the lyrics, intelligence behind the arrangements, and dramatic piano and electric guitar, it is a modern, graceful pop song.
Bertolt Brecht once wrote, “to those who do not know that the world is on fire, I have nothing to say,” and although Tillman must surely be pulled towards that sentiment, pleasingly, he still wants to talk.
