After a two-week hiatus, MusicMonday has returned! Find out what the CL Music Team is jamming this fine Monday to rocket launch the work week. Click here to check out previous entries.
Deborah – Father John Misty, Fear Fun (2012)
If you believe the story that J. Tillman is telling us, he never liked the name Joshua and got tired of "J." So enters Father John Misty, a new persona for the solo artist and former Fleet Foxes drummer, and a story of his relocation from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California. I grew up in the sun-soaked California era of 1970's folk-pop gold that the album is steeped in, and the area has always held much of the same mystique for me that Tillman finds as he heads South. The second song, "Nancy From Now On," sees this optimism steeped in gloriously Carly Simonish disco, lyrics stating "milk and honey flow, just a couple states below." The story starts getting darker quickly as the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles begins to show itself; by song three, "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings," a strong obsession with inevitable mortality emerges, and the narrative moves towards a more truthful portrayal of the city "with Adderall and weed in my veins." Two of the most poignant songs, "Only Son of the Ladiesman," and "Now I'm Learning to Love the War," focus strongly on death, the latter in particular, which seems at first to be about our dependance on oil, but truly speaks more to what we leave behind when we die. Fear Fun isn't all gloom though; Tillman has a twisted sense of humor and an innate knack for conveying it with tongue-in-cheek amusement through varying musical styles. The album is an instant classic that I just can't stop spinning, and touches me personally in a way Fleet Foxes never quite could.
After the jump, check out the morbidly gorgeous video for "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" featuring Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza as a character that singularly defines the chaos of mourning.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2012.