Pure Comedy is the latest album from Father John Misty and it’s as profoundly disappointing as his previous release was impressive. And it’s not hard to see what’s happened.
The penultimate track on that last album, I Love You, Honeybear, reviewed here, is the melodious “Holy Shit”. There, he briefly name-checks many of the Big Issues baring down upon us in these our oh so uncertain times, before breezily dismissing them to ask disingenuously what any of them have to do with all the really important stuff that he has to deal with.
It’s impossible to decide whether he’s being entirely serious, deadpan or a bit of both. Which is what gives the song its charm. And it’s all too easy to imagine what’s happened in the interim.
On the one hand, the commercial success and critical acclaim that that previous album enjoyed mean that the last couple of years must have been a relatively happy time to be Mr. Josh Tillman. And, as fans of Dylan, Shakespeare and pretty much any artist who has ever lived will know, nothing is as creatively stultifying as personal happiness, however briefly endured.
And on the other, he’s clearly begun to believe some of the hype surrounding his prowess as an apparently thought-provoking lyricist.
So that the new album sees him musing almost exclusively on those big, heavy themes which were briefly touched upon in “Holy Shit”. Only now, far from wryly acknowledging his own ignorance on any of them, he seems to imagine that he’s suddenly become something of a sage, and any sense of irony has been summarily dismissed. What’s worse, his mellifluous voice, impeccable diction and regal sense of melody mean that it’s quite impossible to escape all of those dreadful lyrics.
Imagine Martin from the Simpsons being set as his homework the task of producing a set of lyrics designed to impress the grown ups. This is what his first draft would have looked like. Not that he’d have ever actually shown them to anyone, obviously.
I studiously avoided the latest Car Seat Headrest album, Teens of Denial. The boys from All Songs Considered, reviewed here, have been so effusive about it these last few months that I’d been thoroughly put off and was quietly hoping to be able to casually dismiss it. There’s a thin line that separates infectious enthusiasm from irritating insistence. So I’m delighted to be able to report that they were right and I was wrong. It really is that good.
There’s a palpable air of early Beck wafting from the tracks collected here. He inhabits a very similar persona to the one that Beck adopted way back when, as a guileless slacker drifting directionless like Pound’s hedonist bereft of purpose, to the tune of a post-punk, new-grunge musical backdrop.
But as with Beck, the sonic landscape is infinitely more complex than it first appears, and you quickly find yourself disappearing from the song’s casual surfaces into the murky depths below. All of which results in a serious album, from one of the most exciting new artists to emerge for many a moon.
You can see the video for “Vincent”, track 2 from Teens of Denial here
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