QR Music Review: God's Favourite Customer - Father John Misty
4/5
Arriving just a year after the release of third album Pure Comedy, which cemented his status as the industry’s premier jaded troubadour possessing glorious facial hair and lyrics acidic enough to rot steel, Father John Misty’s newest offering, God’s Favourite Customer, fits neatly into his mythology. Where Pure Comedy was a biting—though sometimes meandering—rebuke of the capitalist status-quo, a vessel for Tillman to express his disdain at the state of humanity, this newest release is much tighter, hitting closer to home and to the heart.
Often-hopeless and hopelessly romantic, God’s Favourite Customer offers a vision of Tillman in a much softer mood, though he’s grown older and a little more love-weary since sophomore LP I Love You, Honeybear’s heart-wrenching grandeur. ‘Please Don’t Die’ sees perhaps the most vulnerable Misty yet, who slips into a trembling falsetto of “Oh honey, I’m worried about you/You’re too much to lose/You’re all that I have” before dissolving into a delicate acoustic outro that slowly fades into piano-led ‘The Palace’. Here and throughout the album’s 38-minute runtime, Tillman’s voice is, as always, radiant. ‘The Palace’ and later track ‘The Songwriter’ are some of his finest vocal turns; his tones are rich and deep, his delivery raw and delicate, his fears about romance, relationships and the future laid bare.
Still, though, his idiosyncratic, introspective bite stings. Songs like the opening triptych of driving, bass-led ‘Hangout at the Gallows’, lead single ‘Mr. Tillman’ and ballad-by-numbers ‘Just Dumb Enough To Try’ witnesses Tillman place the songs’ own creator between their acerbic jaws, a sly slither of self-degradation that only blurs the division between the half-caricature Misty and Tillman himself further. “What’s your politics?” he laments during ‘Gallows’’ sweeping, echoed chorus, both an appeal to his audience and a desperate searching within himself. “What’s your religion? What’s your intake? Your reason for living?”. ‘Date Night’, one of the album’s melodic and instrumental highlights, cuts deep into the Misty persona further, unravelling the stained, constructed charisma of the sleazy ladies’ man. Nothing might impress Misty much, or so he says, but Tillman is increasingly affected, an artist grown older and even more cripplingly self-aware.
Musically, God’s Favourite Customer is much shorter, simpler and sonically cleaner than its three predecessors—perhaps too much so at times, though this isn’t to say Tillman’s songwriting has grown tedious. Little diversion from the proven Misty template aside, Tillman and co. deliver his signature soft-rock masterfully, diving into the baroque and lavish with aplomb when needed, especially on closer ‘We’re Only People…’. But the draw of Father John Misty is only partially musical. Equally as fascinating is the evolution of Tillman as an artist and songwriter, of Misty as character, wry façade and expression of self. God’s Favourite Customer, though not as bombastically emotional as …Honeybear or as droll as Pure Comedy, allows listeners to uncover a more unguarded Misty. Hidden behind fewer layers of cynicism – though only few, mind – we have been blessed with a much more approachable artist. Though his sonic stylings remain comfortingly familiar, they never become boring, and his fears about identity and the future now lie more open: “Don’t you remember me? I was God’s favourite customer/but now I’m in trouble,”he intones, a premonition, on the album’s titular track.
Whatever trouble this may be, Mr. Tillman, one thing is certain: it’s certainly good to see you again.
By Eilis Lee