Father John Misty
Pure Comedy

Link to listen to the album

Josh Tillman without a beard reminds me a bit of those Vietnam veterans who became homeless and are taken in by proper American homes for Thanksgiving, cleaned up and shaved; a very common practice in U.S. comedies.

If you’ve never seen the classic "homeless" episode of Beverly Hills 90210, Growing Pains or whatever, well, that's your problem: it's a must-have just like phone numbers always starting with "555" and those "rock giants" you love so much.

And in the end, the poetic-sociological analysis that Father John Misty makes of his nation is nothing but pure comedy: a reality show where every identity becomes a stereotype, just as places, non-places, and clichés become stereotypes.
The anemic America still overweight after a century of being a global superpower. America of the 666 via 555: from the "afro but not too much" stereotype, to the tragicomic Trump whom Charlie Chaplin would almost resurrect just to parody him. Between Blaxploitation and grotesque drifts, looking at America feels like watching a John Waters film with Divine ruling the world.

It wasn't easy for Father John Misty to win everyone back after "I Love You, Honeybear," also because one wonders what great surprises a classic singer-songwriter, guitar and voice, a traditional folksinger from the typical American province but also a decent, upright son of those alternating stars and stripes and the Seattle dream, can offer.

Yet here he is, two years later, able to enchant once again with that grace akin to Harry Nilsson of the 2010s, a bit "Skip" Spence, a bit a Givenchy hipster model.

On the side: how repulsive are the bourgeois hipsters of Corso Como with their beards and rolled-up pants? Will this agony end soon?

What strikes about "Pure Comedy," beyond the lyrics and the voice (Father John has a really beautiful voice), is undeniably the charisma of a failed preacher, assisted by a verticality that fears no comparison: arranging are Nico Muhly and Doveman, artists who have touched and transformed into gold all the best of the U.S. music (and beyond) of excellent quality.

And in an album that's a bit of a vagabond, complete with a song-dedication to the paper bag, arranging the strings comes Gavin Bryars, who dedicated an album to the street-singing wino "Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet," one of the most successful of Brian Eno's Obscure Records (Eno is always around, deal with it). A peak never reached again by Bryars who over the years has nevertheless done his part (even adding Tom Waits’ voice to the street-singing bum).

A successful union, because where Bryars has laid hands on this "Pure Comedy," an alignment of intentions has been added that makes this album, in some respects superior and much more focused, compared to the previous one.

I take advantage of the opinionated atmosphere to add that the sound of the piano and some snippets of poetic self-irony reminded me at times of "Ingresso libero" by Rino Gaetano: that album is something sensational, the "Pure Comedy" of the Seventies. What we missed, because of the Italian meat-grinder discography, because of the clumsy "not workings" of the record executives with cigars and their hands on the secretary's butt.

Father John Misty, instead, was born in full "indie" and, in the end, capitalizes on it and rightly so, with that air of nonchalance: all I need is a guitar, Infinite Jest, and a park to lay my blanket.

Last night he was on Facebook improvising songs on themes chosen by his followers: he doesn't care, he goes to the garden to smoke and has a line of perfumes. "Young, handsome, a star and poet": it remains to be understood whether he is the bum or the one who takes in the bum, ashamed of when during the Vietnam War he dodged the draft to become a rich bourgeois.