Album Review: Father John Misty, Mahashmashana

Mahashmashana, the Sanskrit word for ‘great cremation ground’, sees Josh Tillman doing what he does best on his sixth outing as Father John Misty; welding clever lyrics to orchestral ‘70s-inspired soft rock. That said, the title track, which weighs in at nine minutes and 20 seconds, skirts a little close to the middle-of-the-road, particularly when the saxophone solo kicks in.

That benighted instrument makes another appearance on the stop/start ‘Being You’, which automatically sets this listener’s spidey senses tingling. Similarly, on ‘Mental Health’, the AOR arrangement is at odds with Tillman’s literate, acerbic wordsmithery; it perhaps overdoes the irony, becoming almost a pastiche of lounge musak.

Just when you think Tillman has gone too far, however, he hits you with the brilliant, Beck-esque dose of electro-funk of ‘She Cleans Up’, where the melody occasionally and weirdly echoes the 1991 Phil Collins-led Genesis hit ‘I Can’t Dance’.

Previously released single ‘Screamland’, which features Alan Sparhawk from Low on guitar, starts slowly, with a heart-beat rhythm, ululating synths and Tillman’s croon, before building into quite the anthem, his vocal almost buried amid waves of distortion.

The catchy ‘I Guess Time Makes Fools of Us All’ is brilliant, eight-and-a-half minutes of pure Tillman wordsmithery around a quasi-bossa nova swing, while ‘Summer’s Gone’ is a string-drenched croon-fest that wouldn’t be out of place in the Cole Porter songbook.

Proof, if it were needed that Tillman loves confounding expectations, veering from the sublime to the ridiculous, with a knowing wink and a shrug.

8/10