Ever since Josh Tillman took a sarcastic alias Father John Misty, two great albums emerged from his psyche with love pains as major theme. On his third album, he decided to incorporate politics, current status quo, religion and his morbid vision of the world. Love is still a prominent topic, but it is not in the spotlight. The result is pessimistic anticipation of apocalypse, ergo, dystopian future that is closer that we would like it to be. According to Tillman, that future is in the present tense. Humanity is screwed.
Songs on Pure Comedy are sagacious, eloquent, marked with defeatism and anthropological pessimism. Tillman’s lyrics have a leading role on the album, while the music serves as an adequate subtext. Core of that subtext are acoustic guitar and piano arrangements. Choir singing and additionally enriched classic string arrangements supported by jazz moments make the music of the album nearly epic. All songs are in downtempo, making 74 minute of indie rock melancholy.
Father John Misty sings about narcissism, homophobia, lethal influence of social media, wars, hipsters, rich city kids, the role of God and the search for individual place under the sky. In order to prove Tillman’s poetic talent, I am just going to leave this here:
So says the dying man once I'm in the box Just think of all the overrated hacks running amok And all of the pretentious, ignorant voices that will go unchecked The homophobes, hipsters, and 1% The false feminists he'd managed to detect Oh, who will critique them once he's left?
The only song that stands out from the rest of the album is Smoochie, a love ballade (did you doubt there won’t be any love song?) with an atmosphere resembling Tillman’s previous record I Love You, Honeybear. I would say this should be his style forever. I mean, everything is more easy when love is around.
Overall, Pure Comedy is admittedly an album with flaws. It is not for multiple plays, but it is brilliant as a symbolic presentation of modern society.
