Review Summary: It got too hot and so we overthrew the system
I’ve been trying to figure out for a long time what it is about Father John Misty and – more specifically – this bloated, amorphous
Pure Comedy album – that I can’t resist. Certainly Josh Tillman’s voice lends itself to a certain level of thoughtful self-reflection – his tone soft and his lyrics intellectual. His sarcasm is disarming as he sings about the end of existence, as well as its pointlessness in the first place. Tillman’s self-awareness and disregard for how he’s perceived add to the authenticity of the experience; he’s not just another artist passively singing about the things happening in the world – he immerses himself within these events, often front-and-center. It can be seen by some as conceited and arrogant, but I see it as good entertainment. He has a flair for the dramatic, and knows how to hook an audience with outrageous statements such as the opening line from ‘Total Entertainment Forever’, where he sings about having virtual sex with Taylor Swift. It’s simultaneously repelling and authentic, and as listeners desperately searching for something
different, we flock to it like moths to a lantern on a hot summer night. Perhaps it wouldn’t work so well if he wasn’t just as derogatory of himself, as he persistently mocks his own personality, music, and hypocrisy – which is something that the nearly fifteen minute ‘Leaving LA’ does better than any song before it: “Mara taunts me 'neath the tree, she's like, oh great, that's just what we all need – another white guy in 2017 who takes himself so goddamn seriously / I'm beginning to begin to see the end of how it all goes down between me and them, some 10-verse chorus-less diatribe plays as they all jump ship, I used to like this guy, this new shit really kinda makes me wanna die.” Of course, ‘Leaving LA’ is the chorus-less ten verse moment that he sings of, so he’s creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by taunting fans of the album’s far more melodically accessible predecessor,
I Love You, Honeybear, to hate him. Again, it’s both off-putting and alluring; Tillman has the spotlight and he knows it. It’s like he sings just one song later on ‘A Bigger Paper Bag’: “I've got the world by the balls. Am I supposed to behave?”
On
Pure Comedy, Tillman uses his platform to write a seventy-four minute thesis on the human condition, and the eponymous opener acts as its overture. It takes us on a journey from birth (“The comedy of man starts like this: our brains are way too big for our mothers' hips”) to the hubris of mankind (“Just wait until the part where they start to believe they're at the center of everything, and some all-powerful being endowed this horror show with meaning”) to our elected officials (“Where did they find these goons they elected to rule them? What makes these clowns they idolize so remarkable? These mammals are hell-bent on fashioning new gods, so they can go on being godless animals”), and finally pulls it all down during the final verse which remarks on just how pointless we actually are, in spite of our grand romanticizing of nearly everything (“Just random matter suspended in the dark / I hate to say it, but each other's all we've got”).
Pure Comedy just as easily could have been a written text, and it is executed as such. Tillman frequently appears to ramble on, adhering to no particular structure as songs bleed onto one another. Part of me thinks that’s the point – to force you to hone in on his words and their meaning rather than get caught up in an infectious chorus. It’s tempting to insert a
why not both meme in response to that potential motivation, but then again, human existence is a pretty bleak topic these days – at best, it’s worthy of the wry smirk that you can almost hear on Tillman’s lips, but at worst, it’s deserving of this series of no-fucks-given, damning lectures.
At its most humorous, Tillman ridicules our technologically absorbed society, from our attention consuming devices (“Eventually the dying man takes his final breath, but first checks his news feed to see what he's 'bout to miss” / “When the historians find us we'll be in our homes, plugged into our hubs, skin and bones / A frozen smile on every face as the stories replay, this must have been a wonderful place”) to how streaming/music sites attempt to algorithmically manipulate their listeners’ experience and coerce them into being passive consumers rather than active connoisseurs, as the text-to-speech voice clips that are interspersed in the bridge of ‘The Memo’ manage to convey (“You're enjoying the chill winter playlist / Just quickly how would you rate yourself / Indie Brunch / In terms of sex appeal and cultural significance? / Irony, irony, blo-blo-blo-blo-blo-blo-blo / Do you usually listen to music like this? / Just one more mile, you can do it again / Can we recommend some similar artists? / This is totally the song of my summer / Are you feeling depressed? / This guy just gets me / But your feedback's important to us / Music is my life”). As with all of Josh’s cynicism, it comes off as amusing on the surface while the underlying message is a bit more unsettling. It’s a formula he perfected on
Honeybear’s ‘Bored In the USA’, and arguably,
Pure Comedy is nothing more than variations of that song’s tone and cadence stretched across the span of its runtime. That’s precisely why the album is so divisive – it refuses to give listeners what they want – variety, melody – but arguably gives them what they need to hear, even if it can be a bit of a chore to get through.
Pure Comedy does arrive at more pointed commentary, and that’s when it’s at its best. On ‘When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay’, Tillman creates a mock scenario in which Jesus returns to Earth only to find that it’s already gone to hell and no apocalypse is even needed (“Let the seven trumpets sound as a locust sky grows dark, but first let's take you on a quick tour of your creation's handiwork / Barely got through the prisons and stores, and the pale horse looks a little sick – says, Jesus, you didn't leave a whole lot for me, if this isn't hell already then tell me, what the hell is?"), as Josh challenges God’s very intentions (“We crawled out of the darkness and endured your impatience / We're more than willing to adjust, and now you've got the gall to judge us”). Ultimately, his elaborate story arrives at the realization that as humans craft their own ideas of what life means – such as conjuring the idea of God’s existence in the first place – they become the Gods of their own universes, in a sense: “…And to make something out of nothing, sounds like someone else I know.” Transitioning from the abstract to the more concrete, ‘Two Wildly Different Perspectives’ speaks to the political and social polarization in America, lamenting how each side attacks each other with nothing but vitriol instead of seeking common ground: “One side says y'all go to hell, the other says if I believed in God, I'd send you there / But either way we make some space, in the hell that we create, on both sides.” This sort of track has never been more applicable than it is in the present, courtesy of rampant unrest over racial injustice.
Father John Misty’s third album is Josh refusing to behave. He avoids churning out a
Honeybear clone, much to the dismay of the majority portion of his fanbase, and he already knew what the fallout would be before the album even dropped, as he details in ‘Leaving LA’. Perhaps knowing that he couldn’t possibly – or at least not with much ease – follow up his most critically-hailed and commercially viable album with equal success led to a newfound freedom to indulge his eccentricities. In this case, his whims aren’t so wild, but they’re excessively detailed and elaborate. This album is basically Tillman saying
fuck it, and putting pen to paper for a modern tragedy/divine comedy knowing full well that it’s the right time to go big or go home – because anything similar to
Honeybear would only have been met with diminished returns. For that reason,
Pure Comedy will always be viewed as the massively inflated, ego-centric, self-indulgent blimp of an LP that, in spite of its stature, still fell under the shadow of his discography’s best album. All of that may be true, but this record just might be where Tillman’s charm and lyrical aptitude shines the brightest. It’s a cynically twisted and remarkably honest reflection of the world we live in: drowning in our phones, spewing hate, looking for someone to blame, obsessed with ourselves, and convinced that God is on his way to save us. Pure comedy.
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