Your enjoyment of Pure Comedy very strongly depends on what you expect from a Father John Misty album in 2017. If it’s bombastic arrangements and big choruses you seek, best turn back now (or at least dust off your copy of Fear Fun). With a blunt-yet-poetic lyrical approach, Josh Tillman’s third FJM full-length is by far his most ambitious work to date. But there’s a big difference between an ambitious album and a good one.
Pure Comedy’s title is apt; the title track wrestles with religion, government and other human follies, albeit from the distance of an omniscient narrator with a “can you believe this shit?” demeanor. Following the extremely personal document that was I Love You, Honeybear, such a clinical observation of capital-I Issues might seem cynical, but Tillman’s deft and cutting lyrics are inspiring in some perverse way. The same goes for his examination of art vs. artifice on “The Memo,” as well as the rollicking indictment of on-demand content, “Total Entertainment Forever.”
Working again with producer Jonathan Wilson, Tillman wisely scales back the orchestration and flourishes to their bare minimum in order to put his voice and lyrics at the forefront. This approach reaches its zenith on the album’s centerpiece: the 10-verse, chorus-less diatribe that is “Leaving LA,” a metatextual, self-referential masterstroke. Where some of Pure Comedy’s other songs’ lyrical density can be a bit suffocating, “Leaving LA” is expertly paced and astonishingly honest.
—Eric Schuman
