"Fear Fun" is the new album from Father John Misty, the new moniker of Josh Tillman. Following a solo tour in support of this critically acclaimed album, Father John Misty returns for a full band tour later this year.
Musically, “Fear Fun” consists of such disparate elements as Waylon Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, 'All Things Must Pass', and 'Physical Graffiti', often within the same song. Tillman's voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison, “The Caruso of Rock”, at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious and yet conversely playful, almost Dionysian quality. Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or Braughtigan, the hedonistic philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.
The album began gestating during what Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression”, in his former Seattle home. “Songwriting for me had always only been interesting and necessary because I saw it as this vehicle for truth, but I had this realization that all I had really done with it was lick my wounds for years and years, and become more and more isolated from people and experiences. I don’t even like wound-licking music, I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it. I don’t believe that until now I’ve ever put anything at risk in my music. I was hell-bent on putting my preciousness at stake in order to find something worth singing about.”
Echo Park’s NO began as a home recording project in July 2011. In a small house on Mohawk Street a group of friends began building something to represent their collective ethos of searching for the more authentic elements in music and in themselves. Their sound has since been dubbed ‘Post-Hymnal Anthematic’ and would appear to be stemming from their desire to collectively sing & yell while driving others to do the same.
All tickets for this show are completely SOLD OUT.
FATHER JOHN MISTY / NO - SOLD OUT
XOYO
32-37 Cowper Street London EC2A 4AP
8pm
£12