Father John Misty - God’s Favorite Customer (#3/5 Outside Albums of 2018)

Not only did I not expect another Father John Misty project this year after his bloated full-length, Pure Comedy, last year, I didn’t expect it to be such a nicely balanced and enjoyable effort. Pure Comedy was a weird one for me that I didn’t enjoy the first time I listened to it, but one that I did garner some appreciation for after a few more tries. It, however, tired on me rather quickly after my peak of enjoyment for it with so little instrumental substance and indulgent lyricism, I even began to lose sight of why I liked it at all. I get that an album with a concept as vast as Pure Comedy’s was it would of course be a gargantuan task to tackle, but I think it was one of those projects that sounded really good to Josh Tillman on paper, but didn’t really connect all that well on the musical front, the sparseness of which certainly provided less than adequate flattery. This unexpected release however, like the Vince Staples project I also wrote about earlier, fixes the major problems of Tillman’s previous efforts.

On God’s Favorite Customer, Josh Tillman forgoes the overarching theme, aside from perhaps his own personal struggles, and focuses on little vignettes and inspired poems one at a time, tackling what I have seen some calling “easy” material (which may partly explain the swiftness of this release) for Josh. Nevertheless, this album cures the instrumental boredom that infected Pure Comedy, while still maintaining Tillman’s poetic singer-songwriter quality. It’s certainly not perfect, and it has a few songs that aren’t near the level of excitement or lyrical intrigue that the best tracks on here set the bar to, but it’s still a significant improvement, I think. The song “Mr. Tillman” paints a vivid series of fictional scenes at a hotel that portray increasingly concerning snapshots of Tillman’s mental state, and the well-supplemented, hummed (and eventually whistled) melody that it’s based on is well-chosen for its soothingness, but also its uncertainty. “The Songwriter” is a more stripped back number I really like on which Tillman hypothesizes about how he would feel in his wife’s shoes as the main subject of the art he makes, while the title track approaches the manipulation and deception of the church through a rather interesting perspective by Tillman, who sings of once being on good terms with the religion he was brought up in, but falling out of favor as he could not adhere it its rigid rules, possibly even grovelling back to it tentatively in a moment of extreme depression and desperation, which leads me to my favorite track on the album.

I honestly don’t know if I would be writing about this album if not for this song specifically. I wrote at the end of my Deafheaven piece, earlier this year, that this year has come with a lot of growth and relieving (to say the least) mental health repair. “Triumphant consolation” is probably a better phrase to describe what this year ended up bringing, and the catharsis of realizing my successful passage through a dark time in my life came with a profound appreciation for the people around me, and a gratitude for being able to still be here for the person I love most. And this song (which I refer to as my second favorite of the year, period) captured so much of what kept me going through all the darkness. I’m talking, of course, about the blatant, yet gripping “Please Don’t Die”, a song Tillman sings while shifting from his to his wife’s perspectives. On the introductory verses, Tillman sings of his worrisome behavior and messages to his wife from far away, likely on the road, remorseful about putting his wife through such turmoil and concern from out of her physical reach. The choruses and the last verse are sung from her standpoint, pleading with him to not put her through planning his funeral and to not die wherever he might be (physically or mentally). It’s a heart-wrenching song for me that’s tough to even write about right now, but it always leaves me with an appreciation for being alive and a thankfulness that I didn’t abandon and leave an aftermath of sorrow for the person I love most in a similar way.

On that note, yeah, good album.