Father John Misty - God's Favorite Customer

Father John Misty
God's Favorite Customer
2018
Spotify

I've been avoiding this album for awhile now. I knew I should be writing a review, but the thought of listening to an hour of Josh Tillman's musings again felt like nothing more than a chore. ON "Mr. Tillman" he regales us with a tale of his travels and the sudo celebrities He sees along the way. The name dropping is one thing, the whistling is a whole other thing entirely. Tillman sounds so comfortable in the Father John Misty persona on this album it becomes almost gimmicky gross. If you are looking for something different from Pure Comedy (2017) or better yet I Love You, Honeybear (2015) than I am afraid you are out of luck. The jokes are the same, the self-absorbed sentiment is the same, even the songs sound the same as everything He has done since 2015. Eventually the deadpan jokes and syrupy arrangements reach this annoying level of monotony. "Date Night" is downright frustrating with this one piano note played over and over throughout the scratchy fuzz filled track. Father John Misty sounds so full of himself here, as He always has, but in a much more obsessed way. The accolades, the sunset festival sets and pitchfork reviews have him feeling super confident and less concerned with creating something new. "The Palace" sounds like five other songs of his, the delivery, the gentle piano, the acoustic guitar all sound familiar because they are. It's like the neo-bohemian movement had sailed by and acts like Lana Del Rey and Father John Misty haven't realized it yet.

At the beginning of this review I said the album was an hour, well it's only 38 minutes but feels like it could be far longer. The thing about this album really is just how damn boring it is. Unless you are really picking apart these lyrics and looking for a meaning behind every word you are going to be bored to absolute death. The album reaches it's meta peak on "The Songwriter" as Tillman chronicles another love story but through the eyes of the songwriter. It is self-indulgence at it's absolute height. You keep waiting for something to engage, some kind of big moment to pull the album from this muck, but it never ever comes. You are forced to slowly move through this thing each moment unrolling at a snails pace. This has got to be the absolute last time Father John Misty can release an album like this, or at least fully like this. Come kind of change, or new sound could really pull this record around and make it worth listening to. As it is God's Favorite Customer just feels like musical masturbation.

5.0 out of 10