The artist formerly known as Josh Tillman has taken fans through some twists before, but “Father John Misty: big band leader” is probably not a curve very many saw coming as a career de…
: big band leader” is probably not a curve very many saw coming as a career development in 2022. The eclectic singer-songwriter certainly hasn’t been shy about employing orchestration before, to the point of bringing his own sizable string section out on tour on his last pre-pandemic outing, probably at considerable personal expense.
Or do they? “Chloë” works in a big way, once you’ve settled into the comfort of knowing the unique combination of dark themes and sometimes lighter music is not going to be an exercise in camp, even though a certain amount of irony definitely figures into it. Part of why it’s so successful is that Misty remains a moving target throughout the album.
And then, just as quickly as “Chloë” has set listeners to thinking that this is going to be an album of flapper-invoking fun, the record makes an instant 180 with the second number, “Goodbye Mr. Blue.” The title figure in this one is a beloved cat, which expires over the course of the song, paralleling the slow death of the relationship between its two separating care-keepers.
The material sometimes gets more cryptic than there… although, in one case, it’s much less. As idiosyncratic as most of the songwriting is, there’s one completely straightforward number in the mix that has to be the most straightforward piece he’s ever written, or at least released. That is “Only a Fool,” which, although it has a light-swing arrangement, sounds at its core like something Willie Nelson or Harlan Howard might have written for Patsy Cline in the countrypolitan era.
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