Two songs into his encore, just about two hours into his sold-out show at London’s venerated Royal Albert Hall, Father John Misty introduces his gentle 10-minute epic, “So I’m Growing Old on Magic Mountain”. “So,” the singer-songwriter born Joshua Tillman says, lilting his guitar strap around his bearded neck, “here’s yet another interminable meditation on ageing.”
The crowd cheers. They’ve just lured Tillman back to the stage following a standing ovation for “Mahashmashana”, the nine-minute, blustering, saxophone-speckled title track from his sixth album of trenchant indie folk-rock, released in November. He’s being characteristically wry, but another interminable meditation on ageing is precisely what they want.
Tillman is at a unique point in his career. Once something of an indie rock enfant terrible, well-known for his sardonic online presence (which satirised online self-promotion and indie rock stereotypes) and his pull-quote-generating interviews, Tillman all but disappeared from social media and even the music press in 2018. He declined promotional interviews for that year’s God’s Favourite Customer and 2022’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century. In a way, one might expect him to be on a victory lap – Tillman released a greatest hits compilation last August.
Yet he’s never been more potent. Mahashmashana is perhaps his finest record since his breakthrough 2015 album I Love You, Honeybear, more assured in its stark-then-stirring arrangements, its songwriting structure and strong melodies. Its wry, poignant lyricism about meaning and mortality characterises its Tillman-acknowledged “meditations”. Pitchfork argued its songwriting “might be the best it’s ever been”; The Independent gave the “wonderful” album four stars.
Tillman certainly believes in it – his Royal Albert Hall setlist includes every one of its eight tracks – and so does the audience. Backed by a seven-piece band, Father John Misty’s performance brings mammoth orchestral swells and crashing cymbals to the end of “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose”. The wall-of-sound chorus of set highlight “Screamland” crashes into the Royal Albert Hall like a tidal wave. The influence of Mahashmashana’s robust arrangements is palpable in older Father John Misty songs on the night, too: “Nancy From Now On”, from his 2012 debut Fear Fun, is bolstered by charging, galloping toms from the second verse onwards, adding emphasis and drive, while a newly bombastic beginning to “Disappointing Diamonds Are the Rarest of Them All” makes it the set’s most-improved performance.
It's a small shame that the show begins so timidly. Tillman, facially hirsute but stylish in a dark, slim-fitted suit, his white shirt open to his chest, doesn’t speak for the first five songs of his set. It’s not until he begins to warm up – making coy little hand movements during “Being You”; commenting drily that the venue “is certainly the most dignified place I’ve ever been in, and I went to the Sphere in Vegas”; and, finally, going full goblin-mode as he leans into the dramatised machismo of “Nothing Good Ever Happens at the Goddamn Thirsty Crow”, boxing playfully with the front row – that the crowd does too.
From here, though, it’s clear sailing to the show’s finale – not just on “Mahashmashana” but a trio of majestic I Love You, Honeybear encore performances, which ends with the title track’s chorus, about love in the face of an apocalyptically scary world: “Everything is doomed, and nothing will be spared / But I love you, Honeybear.”
Maybe it’s always been this way, that in all of Tillman’s songs, the world has always been about to end. If that’s the case, well – we’ll take another interminable meditation on ageing, please.
Thanks to Alex Cropper Photography
