Midway through “The Memo,” the first single released from Father John Misty’s new album “Pure Comedy,” a disembodied digital voice interrupts the singer, spouting the empty platitudes he is so fond of skewering: “This is totally my song of the summer. This guy just gets me. Music is my life.”
The trick recalls Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier,” where a similarly demented robot voice walks with increasing intensity and desperation through a laundry list of neoliberal ideals. That song and the album from which it came, “OK Computer,” turn twenty years old this spring. Now, in 2017, the message has shifted its form, cloaked in the meme-worthy irony for which Father John Misty is so known.
That moment in “The Memo” is only one in a grab bag of cultural critiques Josh Tillman puts forth on “Pure Comedy,” his third album as Father John Misty, which clocks in at nearly 75 minutes. After examining the ins and outs of millennial love through the lens of his own marriage on 2015’s “I Love You, Honeybear,” Tillman has turned his perspective outward on “Pure Comedy.” (Ahead of its official release April 7, Sub Pop is offering exclusive streaming access to preorders.)
The result is a sprawling epic of an album that alternately mocks, curses and embraces the human condition. With an opening line like “The comedy of man begins like this…”, he casts his net so wide that it’s hard to think of any element of modern life that doesn’t come under his ire over the next 75 minutes.
As Father John Misty, Tillman has crafted one of the most divisive personas in rock music. His first album, 2012’s “Fear Fun,” painted a picture of an aimless drifter, all the nihilism and hedonism of Los Angeles personified. Three years later, “I Love You, Honeybear” found that drifter settling down, to some extent—but not without belittling a shallow hookup, resenting people that he loves and wisecracking about craftsman homes and subprime loans. In the meantime, Tillman has constructed a characteristically absurd social media presence—at one point his Instagram was dedicated entirely to a Sims-like alternate reality.
The rollout of “Pure Comedy” was typical of this persona. Announcing the album’s release in January, Tillman penned a 2,000-word essay that purported to explain the concept of the album, touching on everything from an Ecclesiastes verse to the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis to being eaten by bears. The last week has seen a rash of cover stories on the artist among major music publications, and Tillman himself posted a ridiculous “unboxing” video of the LP.
The character we came to know is one who’s insufferable yet acutely aware of his own insufferability. Whether that amounts to anything deeper is, of course, up for debate—what comes across as witty to some scans as empty provocation to others.
In the new record, we find Father John Misty in full social-commentary mode. On “Total Entertainment Forever”—the one with that couplet involving Taylor Swift and Oculus Rift—Tillman wonders about the implications of a digitally-driven society: “When the historians find us we’ll be in our homes / Plugged into our hubs, skin and bones / A frozen smile on our face / As the stories replay / This must have been a wonderful place.”
On “Two Wildly Different Perspectives,” he takes to task the deep cultural and political divisions present in 2017. “One side says, ‘Kill ‘em all’ / The other says, ‘Line those killers up against the wall,” he sings. “But either way, some blood is shed.”
Tillman’s musical arrangements on “Pure Comedy” are decidedly minimalist, with acoustic guitar and piano driving most of these five-plus-minute ballads, accented in places by a swelling orchestra. Occasionally, digital whirrs and chirps break the folk rock surface like notification alerts here rendered as dark omens.
Unfortunately, the songwriting promise that Tillman displayed on “I Love You, Honeybear” isn’t in full force on “Pure Comedy,” making it an effortful and sometimes monotonous listen. In addition, Tillman is prone to Mark Kozelek-esque, hyper-detailed diversions that threaten to derail the album’s focus. (An origin story about never learning how to play lead guitar on the 13-minute “Leaving L.A.” is a particular culprit.)
Of course, everything about the Father John Misty brand is intentional. The relentless cynicism, the information overload, the absurdism—it’s all an elaborate construct. When you peel back those distractions, however, in those rare moments when the character lets his guard down, Tillman shines.
It’s fitting that two of these moments bookend the album: At the end of the expository opening track “Pure Comedy,” Tillman finally confesses, “I hate to say it, but each other’s all we got.” (If this line sounds familiar, you might be thinking of a certain other cynical anti-hero.)
By the final song, “In Twenty Years or So,” he emerges from his survey of the world weary, beaten and aged but unscathed. He imagines a scene with a nameless companion: “I read somewhere that in twenty years, more or less / This human experiment will reach its violent end / But I look at you as our second drinks arrive / The piano player's playing ‘This Must Be the Place,’ and it's a miracle to be alive.”
While it only barely redeems the taxing hour-plus that precedes it, “In Twenty Years or So” exposes the intimate core beneath Father John Misty’s aesthetic, showing Tillman’s knack for finding the beauty on an often ugly planet. In a world that daily presents us with evidence to the contrary, Josh Tillman closes the latest chapter of his career as Father John Misty with a reassurance: “There’s nothing to fear.”
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