Mistyheads can exhale.The album we’ve been waiting for is here.
For more than a decade, our man J.Tillman has been building a reputation as one of his generation’s most inspired singer-songwriters: a louche and stylish cultural commentator at the intersection of folk-rock and 1970s studio-pop, lacing his songs with lush orchestration and scathing contempt, sparing not even himself.
If you worship music’s lineage of vaunted philosopher-poets — listening to podcasts about old Bob Dylan bootlegs, jacking off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen, et al — there’s a good chance Father John Misty is your chosen prophet.That stature is well-deserved; whether serving up savvy societal reckonings or dissecting his own life with a mix of self-loathing and self-regard, Tillman is nearly peerless among the artists updating classic songcraft for a modern audience.
Which is why his last album was such a weird hang.In 2022, FJM emerged from the other side of the pandemic with Chloë And The Next 20th Century, an album that pushed several decades beyond his usual ’70s-centric influences into the realm of big-band jazz and traditional pop.
Conceptually, it was clever: retreating to the sounds of the roaring ‘20s for a set of songs about how, here in the future, we’re just repeating the prior century’s mistakes.It was good for Tillman to take a big swing like that to challenge both himself and his listeners, and after zeroing in on his own problems while perfecting his shtick with 2018’s masterful God’s Favorite Customer, an aesthetic left turn was the right move.
But a fascinating creative exercise does not necessarily equate to a satisfying listen.None of it worked as well as the apocalyptic closing track “The Next 20th Century,” which tapped back into the Father John Misty wheelhouse with spectacular results.
For Tillman, Chloë was a fun chance to try something well outside that wheelhouse.“Part of the reason making the last album was so gratifyin...