Father John Misty

Pure Comedy

The 75-minute opus is his most boldly experimental and richly produced album to date, with 13 songs that touch on baroque pop, orchestral folk, stark piano balladry, and even gospel.

Despite its multitude of sideways glances, Pure Comedy isn’t a contemptuous sneer, rather an attempt to dust oneself off and seek control of a ship that’s destined to sink no matter what.

If ‘I Love You, Honeybear’ was a sarcastic title for a record of hard truths, it’s got nothing on the name ‘Pure Comedy’ – Tillman’s 75-minute slow avalanche of ballads that relentlessly nags at the absurdity of mankind.

'Pure Comedy' is a beautiful and foreboding soundtrack for the end of civilisation.

Misty keeps this album pretty genuine. There are jaunts and horns and dancing mixed with sorrow and piano and heartache; his lyrics cutting through any joy with wicked humour and his comic persona still second place to his incredible songwriting.

There’s something immediately classic about “Pure Comedy” in its mixing of Elton John meets talking about mundane life, with the booming compositional moments to boot.

For Tillman, Pure Comedy represents a deepening of his artistry, and perhaps, a reaction to the hollowness, the absurdity of success.

Despite the bleakness, Pure Comedy is delivered with wit and warmth, and redeemed by the tiniest twinkle of light.

The Tillman of Pure Comedy ... is in full cultural-criticism mode, analyzing politics, celebrity obsession, social media, the environment and the impending doom of humankind. Yes, when stacked next to each other, those themes have a whiff of pretension that will likely rile his detractors. But, after 75 sprawling minutes, Tillman will have fans believing his gospel.

‘Pure Comedy’ needs investment. It’s verbose and it aims high and it’s not a record you can stick on in the background while you play Candy Crush. But unplug from this modern game of life just for a little while and it’s a very, very special reward indeed.

What makes this more than glib is a golden-era songwriting craft evidently shaped by Tillman's tenure with Fleet Foxes, and his unsparing self-examination.

In this era of easily digested ideas made for short attention spans, Father John Misty challenges his audience to stick with him on a rewarding hour and a quarter slo-mo journey to a sphere that may share a few too many comparisons to ours for comfort.

From a certain angle, all this can play like an elaborate stunt ... but there's a strong melancholy undercurrent to Pure Comedy that suggests Father John Misty is something more than a jester. All of this can be felt through the music itself ... and that, more than the verbal gymnastics, is why Pure Comedy delivers upon much of Father John Misty's outlandish promises.

An absorbing, intermittently amusing album.

Beneath Pure Comedy’s synth-dappled country, blue-eyed soul, and pop fashioned after George Harrison is a battleground filled with religion, pop culture, technology, and neoliberalism.

He may only be another album (and/or a few tweets) away from becoming a parody of himself, but for now Pure Comedy is another elongated and extensive example of Misty’s intense outlook on cliché, contradictory and conceived contemporary life.

It’s the musical equivalent of a cold margarita on a hot summer day, refreshing and yet somehow a little sour.

Pure Comedy shoots itself in the foot too many times to become the masterpiece it longs to be, but as a singular document of its creator’s remarkably incisive wit, deep well of pathos, and thorough eye for detail, it’s hard not to fall just a little bit in love with it. Even if you never listen to it again.

The follow-up to I Love You, Honeybear unfolds like a would-be Great American Novel, but it’s too clever by half and swamped by mid-tempo piano tracks.

There are plenty of moments of satisfaction on the album, but they have a tendency of getting lost in an avalanche of the artist’s own ego. The set-up to Pure Comedy is long, and for many, the punchline won’t be worth the effort.

If you took all of his impromptu onstage rants, every antagonistic promotional outing, every sarcastic tweet, and set it to music, you would have all seventy-plus minutes of Pure Comedy.

Misty's seemingly constant performance art, the artist as satire, has always threatened to overshadow his actual music, but here it seems whatever humanity Honeybear reeked of has been cloaked in ten layers of defensive discomfort.

It’s just a shame that this only partly inspired slog isn’t a little more, well, entertaining.

One of the most frustrating releases of recent times. Tracks meander insipidly, crushed by the weight of a solipsistic “message” and the real moments of quality only serve as a reminder of what might have been.

There’s no variety, no upbeat numbers, no peaks or troughs, not even any virtuoso musicianship to briefly capture the attention. Just 72 minutes of blandness, with Tillman’s verbal diarrhoea smeared all over it.