This guy, Joshua Tillman, appears to have
had his big break in rock music as the drummer
for Fleet Foxes. The breakout album he played
on happens to be in my collection, the 2011
Helplessness Blues. The drummer’s identity
didn’t register with me at the time, nor
should it have, as I wouldn’t hear a song by
his adopted moniker Father John Misty until
2015, and wouldn’t buy my first album of his
until 2017. Learning he used to drum for
Fleet Foxes, when I discovered that fact,
was just an amusing little tidbit, and I learn
just today, without surprise, that he was
pretty much incompatible with that group,
so he left. I think the world of music is
infinitely better for it. His first album
as Father John Misty, Fear Fun, was the
second to the last of his albums I added to the
collection, and is probably my least favorite.
I’m happy that it wasn’t my first listen, because
I may not have gone back. Not that’s it’s bad,
just that it’s the kind of music that doesn’t
really grab me, a kind of folky Americana.
But what would have caught my attention,
even on this record, would be that sardonic
wit, those surprising lyrics: “Pour me
a drink and punch me in the face.
You can call me Nancy.” Funny, self-
deprecating, smart, literary–I would have
liked that. And I would have liked, but
wished there was more of, the kind of
Beatle-esque experimentation on “This
Is Sally Hatchet.” But those crazy lyrics
are what caught my attention the first time
I heard his Springsteen parody from
I Love You, Honeybear, “Bored in the U.S.A.”
This second album is comparatively way
more expansive, experimental, less folky,
more interesting melodically, and more
lyrically rich, risky, dark, and funny.
With its reverb saturated orchestration, the
opening title track is kind of a love song
for the end of the world, a theme he will
return to over and over. While all goes
to shit around them, he sings, “Everything is
fine. Don’t give in to despair, ’cause I love you,
honeybear.”
Pure Comedy was the album that won me over.
A super ambitious effort to reveal the tragicomedy
that is the existence of the human species, the first
song, the title track, is nothing short of a philosophical
treatise on the fallibility and failure, the pure
stupidity of humankind. Ultimately, we’re doomed,
but all we have in the end–is each other.
I was suddenly a Father John Misty convert.
Musically, take the very best of Elton John from
the entire 70’s catalog, and ad an intellectualism
and philosophical depth that Bernie Taupin
came close to, but never achieved. And the
singing on this album is as good as it gets
for Tillman, a.k.a. Misty. It’s a melodic, skilled
baritone, dramatic when it needs to be, but mostly,
quiet and understated, so that the lyrics can do their
work. And work, they do. In terms of a conceptual
continuity, I am hard-pressed to find a better,
more articulated group of songs. Each piece ads
to the commentary on our collective existential
crisis. It’s not a happy record. It’s not a funny record.
In fact, there are moments when my gut response
is to weep–but that’s the other powerful aspect
of this album. It will make you think and it will
make you feel–and if it doesn’t, I’d argue that you
might be a little dead inside. Perhaps the most
poignant moment in the record comes during
one of its most musically challenging numbers.
A brave experiment in minimalism, (and an
anomaly in the context of the album), “Leaving L.A.”
has the same guitar riff and the same vocal melody
(embellished here and there by orchestration)
over and over for 10 long verses of 13 minutes and
12 seconds, in which one verse reveals his first memory
of music, when as a child he nearly chokes
to death in a department store on a piece of candy
while “tell me lies, sweet little white lies”
plays over the JC Penny sound system.
If you know the famous/infamous XTC song,
“Dear God,” and you expanded that conceptually
over one hour and fourteen minutes,
you have some idea what it’s like to listen
to this album. But the whole thing is not just
a fist shaking at god or a tearing down of the
superstitions of religion. There are moments of
redemption, tenderness, and love–which
ultimately, Father John Misty is saying, is the
only thing we’ve got–and it will have to do.
The last lyric lines on the album, so astounding
to me that I’ve written about them before and think
about them often, are these: “I read somewhere that in
twenty years, more or less, this human experiment
will reach its violent end. But I look at you, second
drinks arrive, the piano player’s playing “This Must
Be the Place,” and it’s a miracle to be alive–
one more time.” And then he sings the last line
three times in succession for good measure:
“There’s nothing to fear.”
Pure Comedy stands out to me as being one
of my favorite albums thus far of this 21st century.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Fear Fun, Sub Pop Records, 2012, black vinyl.
- I Love You, Honeybear, Sub Pop Records, 2015, pink marbled vinyl. This is a terrible pressing, fuzzy and distorted, even after cleaning.
- Pure Comedy, Sub Pop Records, 2017, double album, one disc on silver and black marble vinyl, another disc on gold/orange marble vinyl.
- Note: I think Sub Pop needs to do some quality control on its vinyl replication. These are not good pressings–especially immediately after listening to Donald Fagen. Noisy, sometimes distorted playback. Here’s another instance where I would recommend purchasing the CD versions.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 