Chloë and the Next 20th Century

Father John Misty - Chloë and the Next 20th Century
Critic Score
Based on 33 reviews
2022 Ratings: #333 / 805
User Score
2022 Rank: #617
Liked by 132 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
NME
On album five, Mr Tillman’s ambitious, big band-style visions and bossa nova experiments (yes, really) come to life with thrilling effect.
90
PopMatters

Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century is filled with deeply imaginative arrangements and sophisticated, textured songwriting.

90
XS Noize
Elegant, beautiful, sweet, and sad, but most importantly, the record is timeless in every sense; it will hold a place in people's hearts for decades and decades to come while having the ability to make it hard to pin when it was created. Tillman has nothing to prove.
90
DIY

On ‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’, Father John Misty is transporting himself to a different world; it sounds pretty damn sweet over there.

88
Paste

Chloë represents a very stark, yet impressive left turn for Tillman, a record that sees him grow not only as a narrative lyricist, but also a master arranger.

83
A.V. Club
Josh Tillman’s new album is a foray into old Hollywood that goes down like a smooth martini.
83
Entertainment Weekly

Nearly every track comes draped in a lush overlay of strings and piano, though the lyrics ... are pure picaresque, so full of eccentric characters and casual Hollywood lore they feel less like songs than Paul Thomas Anderson movies compressed to six minutes or less.

80
Record Collector

Sly and sumptuous, it high-kicks, slinks and preens into view as a set of Hollywood songs of delusion, heartache, stardom, nostalgia, and tragicomic obsession, unabashed in its excesses and meta-mischief alike.

80
The Guardian
Josh Tillman’s stunningly melodic, sepia-tinged new songs are so much more than knowing facsimiles of vintage styles.
80
Uncut
Lush, orchestral heartbreak from Josh Tillman's divisive and unforgivingly gifted alter ego.
80
Mojo

As Chloë and the Next 20th Century sees Father John Misty escaping into his own parallel Hollywood reality, it's highly entertaining to slip in alongside him.

80
Northern Transmissions
It’s a big, bold, beautiful statement that doesn’t hit you over the head but gently and carefully makes it way into your heart.
80
The Telegraph
While this pastiche is obviously intentional, it never really feels like one. It also creates a much more romantic and intriguing world to fall into than the closed-curtains one of its predecessor. Josh Tillman remains a curious cat, but here he also sounds like a much more contented one.
80
Dork
With a full orchestra at his heels, Father John Misty’s fifth album is likely to be one of the classiest and most ambitious records of the year; only he could pull this off.
80
Clash
‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’ is a sprawling statement with little concern for the outside world, he gushes over Chloe’s successes as a star yet laments how crowds praise her – he wants her all to himself. The record is vast yet insular, and you cant help but get swept up by the show.
80
The Irish Times
The idea of restraint here is interesting, given that there is a real sonic lusciousness at work also, producing an often dazzling if at times discomfiting effect. Genres meld and bend, from a country inflection here to a Weimar-era Kurt Weill nod there, yet nothing seems too pastiche, or laboured.
80
Rolling Stone UK

He gets the balance right here ... keeping his smart-arse side in check and letting his smoky croon melt into the background, behind strings and woozy brass.

80
The Skinny
Josh Tillman’s latest release under his notoriously self-indulgent Father John Misty moniker marks a refreshing change in direction: privileging the music far above the man.
80
Beats Per Minute
Not every entry is gripping, and their mileage will depend on how much time you’re willing to settle in and let them wash over you, but overall it’s an impressively graceful skip into a new era for the songwriter.
80
AllMusic
Fans who fell in love with Tillman's sharp social commentary will find plenty to hone in on, but the lush sounds take some of the bite out of his clever barbs and cynical perspectives on love and connection. Even with the strong, considered design of his previous albums, Father John Misty has never sounded so pleasant.
79
Pitchfork
Singer-songwriter Josh Tillman reaches far, far back to the golden age of Hollywood for a dreamy, lushly orchestrated, wryly comic collection of vignettes that all depend upon the timelessness of a love song.
75
Spectrum Culture
Father John Misty’s conspicuous vanishing act – away from being a big online personality – only highlights his impressive, and remarkably consistent, knack for delivering razor-sharp lyricism atop lush soundscapes.
75
Under the Radar

While Chloë and the Next 20th Century doesn’t quite measure up to the best of his impressive catalogue, lacking in some of the more unique traits that make those albums so special, even a slightly weaker Father John Misty album is still pretty damn good.

70
Loud and Quiet

Chloë and The Next 20th Century is testament to Father John Misty’s art of weaving a tale that is all too familiar, yet seemingly far removed from our present reality – it’s rooted in nostalgia, rumination and longing.

70
Rolling Stone

With delicate orchestral arrangements, a dead Turkish Angora, and an overlying Old Hollywood theme, Chloë and the Next 20th Century is the most un-Misty-like album yet. We’re OK with that.

70
Gigwise

Chloë and the Next 20th Century sees Tillman embrace Hollywood’s Golden Age with more musical cues inspired by the silver screen’s black and white era than you could shake an entire tree at.

70
Albumism
The dude sounds bored. Extrapolating from the point about the sound, Misty’s disaffection throughout most of the album is in fact something we can read as character acting.
70
musicOMH
These songs are bound together by their musical arrangements, presented as rightful heirs to a lost catalogue of great American songwriting.
60
The Independent

Chlöe and the Next 20th Century presents Tillman as a sort of jaded Jacques Brel – he is less obnoxious than ever. But as with many good villains, the less I empathise with Father John Misty, the more I care what he has to say.

60
Exclaim!

It's opulent and immaculately composed but lacks the strong perspective that's usually central to FJM's work. Many of the lyrics display Tillman's signature wit, but his targets here aren't as clearly defined as on past works.

50
Slant Magazine

Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century chases love as its guiding subject but too rarely feels amorous or sensual.

50
The Line of Best Fit

For an album which so clearly sells itself as a capital C concept Album, the narrative is indecipherable; each track dropping a handful of new character names, and the final song seems to give up on it completely.

40
The Needle Drop
For me, this is somewhat of an unfortunate album for Mr. Tillman.
Doublez
75

Let's get carried away by the nostalgia of a time that no longer exists in Chloe and the Next 20th Century, a timeless love story in black and white settings. Father John Misty succeeds again in the challenge of the concept and he seems to take pleasure in doing it

[ Hey AOTY, It's a pleasure to see you again after a 2 weeks break, Love]

Beyond his musical content, Father John Misty is also known for his remarkable and fascinating career. Born in Maryland, the artist began his career under ... read more

BradTasteMusic
68

A very pretty project. FJM isn’t doing anything too impressive, but it sounds quite nice

Davibitt1234
83

Embora estaria mentindo se dissesse que 'Chloë and the Next 20th Century' chega ao nível dos melhores álbuns de Father John Misty como 'I Love You, Honeybear' e 'Pure Comedy', seu mais novo álbum é ainda um registro fascinante que consegue figurar entre os melhores discos do ano até agora ao trazer uma extrema qualidade lírica e sonora.

Father John Smith sempre mostrou ser um grande compositor ao trazer uma altíssima qualidade lírica ... read more

FunkyBlood9696
57

I would love to be generous with this record, but all I could think of while listening to it, is how little it has in common with Tillman's previously amazing material like "I Love You, Honeybear" and "Pure Comedy"
For one, the song-writing on here is really general, low on substance and details, which would be fine if it was a good record in a lot of other ways, but with it being this plain and borderline mindless, I don't really want to buy into anything else happening on ... read more

igligl
89

I struggled to understand this album. I knew it was really good especially the last track but I didn’t really understand why. That’s because I approached it like every Father John Misty album before this. This is not like those albums. Father John Misty’s previous 4 albums all had this pretentious sarcastic character and the meaning in it was derived from exploring this character as he moves through life and conflicts regarding things from meaning to art to love. This is not ... read more

Rolls
62

Probably I need to listen more intently to the lyrics. Having not done that yet, I got bored. I'll try again, and probably give a better score, when my attention span improves. Some nice little dinglidongly old Hollywood noises in here though.

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Added on: November 28, 2021