Father John Misty "Fear Fun"
FORMAT | LP
when discussing 'father john misty', tillman paraphrases philip roth: 'it's all of me and none of me, if you can't see that, you won't get it'. what i call it is totally arbitrary, but i like the name. you've got to have a name. i never got to choose mine.' he goes on, 'people who make records are afforded this assumption by the culture that their music is coming from an exclusively personal place, but more often than not what you hear are actually the affectations of an 'alter-ego' or a cartoon of an emotionally heightened persona,' says josh tillman, who has been recording/releasing solo albums since 2003 and who recently left seattle's fleet foxes after playing drums from 2008-2011. musically, 'fear fun' consists of such disparate elements as waylon jennings, harry nilsson, arthur russell, 'all things must pass', and 'physical graffiti', often within the same song. tillman's voice has never been better and often sounds like roy orbison, 'the caruso of rock', at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious and yet conversely playful, almost dionysian quality. lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of bukowski or braughtigan, the hedonistic philosophy of oscar wilde and the dried-out wit of loudon wainwright iii.
