Sometimes albums reveal themselves through their ending: on his fifth record, »Chloë And The Next 20th Century«, Father John Misty aka Joshua Michael Tillman sets a closing point with »The Next 20th Century«, which immediately re-dissects the previous ten songs. In it, the 40-year-old elaborates once again on the relationship of art and artists to the rest of the world. He couches all this in a flattering tone that could come straight from a rancid stage in Las Vegas. Sometimes violins push the rhythm, but much stronger in the arrangement are the strident guitars, which resist any nostalgia, any homeliness. That Father John Misty moves in this liminal area has been known since his third album »Pure Comedy«. Here, all this sounds less like country and more like jazz and swing, like a classic Hollywood sound, like an old bar, like a bygone era. Which Tillman manages to do with his own voice. The most important question about »what’s it all for?« Tillman doesn’t answer. Longing and the search for meaning are blurred together with humour and the absurd. Consequently, this album subsequently ends with the words, »But I’ll take the love songs and the great distance that they came«. History repeats itself. Or it at least seems to. And when everything goes to the dogs, there is only the love songs left over. The last refuge from war, madness and all that other stuff. Packed in bittersweet melodies. The album for everyone and anyone who stopped understanding the world a long time ago.
Destroyer
Labyrinthitis
Bella Union