Hi everyone. Sweethony Treattano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. And it's time for a review of this new Father John Misty album, Mahashmashana.

Here we have a brand new LP from singer, songwriter extraordinaire Josh Tillman, aka Father John Misty. It is his sixth album in fact, and the follow up to his 2022 album Chloe and the Next 20th Century, which I think is my least favorite album he has released so far.

Which is why in the lead up to this new album, I've been sitting here with my fingers crossed, hoping for some kind of bounce back, some kind of sea change. Because I think if Chloe proved anything, it's that Josh's high gloss indie chamber folk act was either wearing thin or just having a difficult time responding to experimentation or increased theatrics.

So yeah, maybe a change is in order, which I think in some ways Josh is setting the stage for. I mean, the title of this thing in Sanskrit represents a great cremation ground. Which – are we being told we're at the end of some kind of artistic life cycle here? And in a recent interview, Josh Tillman did also say this album feels like it's his last record, but it's not actually going to be his last record. It just feels like that.

Which I suppose is not a surprising sentiment from a guy who really has lived multiple lives musically, because for the past 10 years he has mostly been known as Father John Misty and, again, has released six albums under that name. Josh over the years has also made many a songwriting contribution to figures with audiences much larger than his, be it Post Malone, Beyonce, also Lana Del Rey.

Turning the clock even further back – at one point he was the drummer for the legendary indie folk outfit Fleet Foxes. And then on top of it, there is an entire catalog of music released under the J. Tillman name, which is essentially just more solo Josh Tillman music that was all put out before the Father John Misty name switch that nobody even talks about anymore.

So because of all that, another artistic evolution from Josh Tillman at some point wouldn't really be surprising. He's also released a Great "ish" Hits compilation of many of the artistic triumphs of his past under the FJM name. Apparently the song "Real Love Baby" has been blowing up out of the blue, especially on TikTok, to the point where now people like Cher are tweeting about it.

So yeah, there are a lot of very interesting and surprising events colliding all at once as we are getting this new Father John Misty record that in some respects feels kind of like a curtain call. In fact, it opens up with the title track, the starting song, the intro song. It's an intro song that feels like a closer. It's also the longest song on the album at 9 minutes and 20 seconds. A song that long right at the start of your album, that is quite the sequencing choice. And in typical Father John Misty fashion, we get the expressive drum fills, the pronounced piano chords, the soaring strings, as well as the jangly acoustics.

For anyone who has heard a great deal of Father John Mistie's output up until this point, this essentially feels like a formula. However, this is one of Tillman's most triumphant tunes in this vein, especially as the horns and guitars really pile on as the song progresses, gradually turning this track into a super grandiose send-off of sorts. And what it lacks in variation in its song structure and also the greater FJM catalog, it makes up for in its sheer size and strength.

Because that final climax right toward the end of the track is just absolutely deafening in the most exciting way. And I think there's a serious sense of finality also coming through in the lyrics on the track as well, as we see these recurring themes around death and the next universal dawn, as well as scenarios where we have some kind of grand disillusionment.

So again, this track is just huge. It's just massive emotionally, structurally, instrumentally. And by the time it's over, I'm sitting here thinking, wow, that was great. I'm so done. You really sort of like peaked. You hit that. You did that. But then there's like still an entire album left.

The next track is "She Cleans Up", which I think is an effective transition because comparatively this is the most digestible song on the entire record. I think it's kind of a rock bopper, not Tillman's usual thing these days. It feels like a combination of Black Keys and Cake with a touch of Viagra Boys. With all of those bands collaborating to, from memory, do their own version of Genesis's "I Can't Dance".

Needless to say, I'm not crazy about it. Like, I think there's merit behind the artistic works of all of these bands that I'm hearing parallels to. But I just don't know if this like groovy spoken cowbell rock is really Tillman's strong suit. But I guess it does play into his current reset/rebirth, kind of sets things in a different direction.

The following "Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose", I think, is a better mix of familiar and adventure. It's a solemn piano ballad with lots of witty tongue in cheek lyrics, which is, I mean, really like that classic Josh Tillman formula. But simultaneously we have these tinny, bluesy guitar embellishments popping in every once in a while, these hyper aggressive, very loud string arrangements popping in really, really just like a deafening volume.

The vibe of the track feels subtly trippy while simultaneously describing a personal hell that I would want to escape from immediately: "She put on Astral Weeks / Said I love jazz and winked at me." Yeah, maybe that's kind of a music nerd sentiment, but if somebody put that Van Morrison album on and said, yeah, I'm totally into jazz, like I would cringe so deeply. And yeah, Josh follows that up of course, with "This Is the last place I ought to be."

Later into the track, Josh describes what it is kind of like a nightmare blunt rotation dialog: "A publicist and a celibate / Started talking politics by a small degree / She got him to admit / They're tacit fascists without knowing it."

But yeah, the entire narrative of the song sounds like a combination between an acid trip and then just like a very lonely, dark, sad realization that you have lost something that is never coming back. You're never going to regain that thing, be it your mind, your youth, certain opportunities you've squandered, whatever it is. And the closing lyrics of the track really kind of pinpoint that feeling of bliss but also loss with "I ate an ice cream / Dazed in the street, but it never tastes quite as sweet again."

Following this we have another piano ballad on the record, the song "Mental Health", which I thought was a kind of fitting song idea and title considering this is the same man who recorded the album God's Favorite Customer, which if that record was anything, it was a self dissection of Tillman's mental stability at that time. So I'm kind of curious as to what more he might have to say on the topic.

But Josh's narrative approach this time around is surprisingly cavalier in tone, valuing risk over safety as he makes pretty clear in some final words on the track, with "The one regret that's really pretty tough / Is knowing you didn't go nearly far enough," which he pairs with many a lyric that seems to imply that chasing after your mental health and trying to attain it is like some kind of self enforced restriction or imprisonment. He gets kind of cynical about it with the labeling and inference that there's like, you know, kind of a virtue signal-y kind of element of showing off your mental health, or the fact that this topic has been made into kind of a market and a community that is filled with opportunists. He doesn't necessarily propose any solutions by the end of the song, and I don't think he's necessarily turned against the idea of mental health per se is like as a concept really. I just kind of take it as another instance of him taking the piss out of something, as he typically does on a track or two with each album that takes a sort of satirical bent.

The risks on this record continue with the song "Screamland", which was a big single in the lead up to this record. Sadly, I did not really enjoy this track when it came out. I still don't really like it in the context of the album. I find the verses to be too skeletal and then the explosive choruses, they burst into what kind of sounds like this white hot wall of grating post rock noise. The vocals and guitars and bass to my ears are just really all fried. And it just reminds me of a track or two off of Chloe in that while the song at the core of this track may be good or well intentioned on some level, the way it sounds for me personally is just a non starter.

Moving on to the song "Being You", this track narratively also seems to be dealing in an end of sorts. This time it's between Josh or a protagonist and another person who at one point seemed like they were familiar or close in some kind of way, be it romantically or platonically, and they've grown to a point where the protagonist is barely even paying attention to this person in conversation, and they seem so distant and so alien and so different. Now they're sort of thinking they're wondering what would it be like to be you? Which again seems like it's born mostly out of who the hell are you even anymore. I feel like the only way to sort of like learn and understand that would be to become you.

The tune of the track, though, by usual FJM standards I feel like, is pretty average. I'm more enthralled by Josh's performance and his lyricism this time around. Some of the weird, surreal instrumental embellishments I think are also a plus, and that's something that I hope he continues experimenting with going forward.

And then after this we have the massive 8-minute single "I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All", which if you remember was featured as kind of a teaser for that Great "ish" Hits compilation that was dropped not too long ago.

But yeah, the track is still great to my ears and sounds good within the context of this album and certainly adds to its recurring themes of finality. This track also comes off a bit experimental as well, as it has a very solid series of disco grooves hanging in the background, which is a rhythm approach that Josh does not usually take on his songs, on his piano ballads. And yet it works so well here with a lot of colorful arranged instrumentation on top. You could argue that at this length, maybe Josh is belaboring the point a little bit, but I still do like what this track has to say about these greater disillusionment feelings. And specifically in regards to this track that manifests in time gradually wearing everyone down across the length of the song.

Josh also makes a lot of allusions to the various highs and lows of his career up until this point, saying he followed his dreams and his dreams asked him to crawl. Also making the claim that he turned down a Rolling Stone cover at one point and was told that he was the least famous person to turn down a Rolling Stone cover.

So yeah, this track has a lot to say. It really does stick around for a while, but considering how epic and grand and groovy the instrumentation is, I don't mind the length.

And then the closing track, "Summer's Gone", is maybe the most musical theater the entire record gets. And yeah, once again we have the theme of time passing coming up specifically here with warmer, more fun, more idyllic times kind of being behind us. It's a great, convincing performance and I think a really strong way to tie up an album like this.

But what's kind of funny about this track and the angle that it's setting is that this is coming from the same man who recorded and released the album Pure Comedy, which is kind of like one of the biggest popular music statements of all time in terms of, like, just saying, man, our existence is futile and in many cases quite laughable. And if those were the salad days – or at least, you know, we're closer to those days, because there are lyrics on this track that make a reference to his first FJM album, Fear Fun – if those were the salad days, what the fuck are we looking forward to?

Yeah, honestly, I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to think about it.

So yeah, I thought this record was pretty good. Good. Definitely an improvement on what we got with Chloe. But as much of a bounce back it is, it still does kind of feel like a transitional moment, a little bit kind of a mixed bag. Some tracks feel kind of typical, others experiment in ways that don't fully pan out. Most of the performances and songwriting though are quite good and throughout the album you do have these recurring themes that I've been making note of for the entirety of the review.

So there is like a consistency there. There is a conceptuality there for sure, but still, even a pretty Father John Misty album is several cuts above the average stuff you're seeing out there much of the time on the singer songwriter circuit, which is why I'm feeling a decent 7 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Father John Misty. Forever.