BeatRoute Magazine AB print e-edition - April 2017

musicreviews
Father John Misty
Pure Comedy
Sub Pop
Father John Misty is worth listening to because of the
work his listeners must put forth in order to understand
him. There’s nothing he does that can be taken at face
value, whether it’s a song, album, interview, or short film,
because, as he admits himself, it’s all for show. He admits
this in many ways: he smirks at whatever camera happens
to be trained on him, he over-exaggerates already
melodramatic stage antics.
FJM gets away with this because he is an acknowledged
character; a moniker with which former somber
songwriter Josh Tillman can (ironically) express a
different, truer side of himself. Father John Misty is an
exuberant, attention-seeking, self-serious singer – one
who takes pleasure in what sometimes feels like performance
art. In all of his music, it’s clear Misty’s usually
making fun of someone, but on Pure Comedy, the
third album he’s released as Father John Misty, Tillman
sets his sardonic sights on making fun of humanity and
existence in general.
In 2011, Tillman released his first album as Father
John Misty, the wandering, folk-rocking Fear Fun,
which may be the piece of art most clearly related to
the Misty character to date. It leans heavily on aesthetics
and musical styles established in the early ‘60s and
‘70s by Kris Kristofferson and Neil Young, the latter of
whom Misty name checks on the album’s free-reeling
riff on life in Laurel Canyon, “I’m Writing a Novel.” In
2014, he released I Love You, Honeybear, where he continued
to keep his audience at arm’s length, but draws
back the curtain ever so slightly, bridging the gap in
some ways between the man and the character, even
though his performances then became more stylized
(read: more ridiculous). On “Chateau Lobby #4” he
sings, “Dating for 20 years just feels pretty civilian / I’ve
never thought that / Ever thought that once in my
whole life / You are my first time.” Knowing that as he
wrote Honeybear he married his girlfriend turns his
lyrics from interesting character-wise to touching in a
more tangible, appreciable way.
Now, on Pure Comedy, an album filled to the brim
with references to Misty himself, his past albums and
their obsessions with romancing L.A. life, and pointed attacks
on politics, love, and humanity’s exceptional ability
to absorb and recycle these things, he’s his least funny
– but it suits the present. Another smirking comedian,
arms-crossed wearing a know-it-all persona isn’t what
we need, we need someone known for jokes to revisit his
old seriousness and use how big a deal that switch is to
emphasize his point.
On “Leaving L.A.,” the crux of the album, it feels as
though he’s pointedly acknowledging it’s time to hang
up many of Misty’s most enigmatic qualities in pursuit
of a more personally fulfilling, open relationship with his
audience; a method that, based on the way the songs
come across, and the tone with which he delivers them,
makes it easier for him to comment on the present without
the trouble of framing everything within the context
of this other Self. Still, Tillman displays his relentless
self-awareness; he’s always known exactly how he’s come
across (“‘These L.A. phonies and their bullshit bands /
that sound like dollar signs and Amy Grant’ / So reads
the pull quote from my last cover piece / titled, ‘The
Oldest Man in Folk Rock Speaks’”).
The irony of the album’s first track “Pure Comedy,”
which gives the album its name, is that for the first
time this isn’t in reference to his own kind of comedy, it
seems like it’s a reference to everybody else’s. The song’s
accompanying music video depicts (amid a chaotic
swirl of crude cartoons) memes, viral Youtube clips, and
political sound bites, all of which were cited and used
again and again throughout the presidential campaign
and for a time afterwards. For the first time Misty seems
comfortable not only creating something for his fans to
look at, but something he can look at too, next to them,
with them, instead of across from them at a vantage
point where he can take their temperature and adjust
accordingly.
There is slight disappointment with Pure Comedy being
made of the same (or similar) ingredients found on I
Love You, Honeybear. However, there are some inspired
arrangements from in-demand composers Gavin Bryars
and Nico Muhly, like on the album’s penultimate track,
“So I’m Growing Old on Magic Mountain,” a song where
Misty sounds tired, resigned to the fact that he’s spent
too much time running from adulthood, and is therefore
destined to become lost, unable to use his latent
self-awareness for anything other than perspective, or at
best to help others. Really, it’s gorgeous. It is reminiscent
of Neil Young in style, and once that becomes clear,
there’s little investigative work necessary to draw it to
one of Young’s similarly themed tracks, “Sugar Mountain.”
Another bright spot on an otherwise musically satisfactory
album comes in the form of the Bowie, “Young
Americans”-esque, “Total Entertainment Forever,” the
only song that balances lyrics and music as perfectly as
anything on Honeybear, where the inclusion of buzzing
horns successfully distracts from the increasingly foreboding
song lyrics – a method of delivery which suits
them perfectly, as throughout the song Misty warns that
although we’re living in the greatest age, where we seem
to be our happiest, it’s all superficial happiness.
The rest of the smartest arrangements on the album
should be considered as such not because they do
anything splashy, but quite the opposite: they leave
large space for the lyrics and Misty’s unmistakable voice
(which has never sounded better).
Even with its similarities to Honeybear, the music is
intoxicating, immersive, and satisfying. Still, Misty has
always been a more gifted lyricist (able to translate and
articulate humanity’s worst, modern insecurities) than
he is a musician, which he acknowledges in a way on
“Leaving L.A.” “So I never learned to play the lead guitar /
I always more preferred the speaking part.”
He bookends the album with the message that none
of this really matters – no matter how good or bad it
all may seem. “We’re hurtling through space,” he sings
on “In Twenty Years or So.” This message, which he
delivers like it’s his ultimate point, contradicts a lot of
what he says throughout the album’s second act. It’s
an indication Misty’s as confused as we are. As he puts
forth a variety of argumentative theses that tackle why
the country is the way it is, where it’s headed, and why
it’s headed there, it’s a comforting notion that he, too,
is unable to make reasoning the present seem like it’s
anything other than a method of throwing everything at
the wall and seeing what sticks.
• Alex Southey
illustration: Cristian Fowlie
BEATROUTE • APRIL 2017 | 51