Father John Misty – Mahashmashana

Father John Misty has left the building. Mahashmashana, his latest album, reads like an elegy, backed by some of his most ambitious and hefty arrangements to date. Ditching the occasionally hard-to-swallow and sparser golden-age-pop of previous record Chloë and the Next 20th Century, his sixth album lands safely back in traditional Misty territory full of dense walls of sound and even denser lyrics. He’s predictably obtuse and joyfully so. He’s always having his cake and eating it – but perhaps this time as a final victory lap.

On said lap, he laconically retreads classic lyrical topics that he’s done before, revisiting the language of Hollywood to sketch out the darker side of fame. Glimpsed through visions of visions and dreams of half-remembered films (‘She Cleans Up’), he falls further down the rabbit hole than ever before. It’s another gradual decline into oblivion, overcooking it with drugs and grabbing after sordid candor and sketches of women as his only landmarks. If Chloë put cinema under a microscope, Mahashmashana is left to reckon with the diseased remains. The narrative has moved on. It’s a bookend, or at least an acknowledgement of the gentle ego-death and reinvention cycle that has followed FJM throughout his career.

He has a track record of dying, of course: this isn’t the first time he’s killed a pseudonym. J. Tillman met his end in 2012 before Father John picked up the baton and doggedly waltzed into the public consciousness. You can’t move for songs investigating his impending end throughout his career and, famously, he’s always being reborn too (see: Pure Comedy’s title track). And let’s be clear: Mahashmashana literally translates to ‘great cremation ground’. It’s an album littered with nostalgic references to earlier in his back catalogue, be that musical, the skittering and disruptive electronic break of ‘Screamland’ calling back to I Love You, Honeybear’s ‘True Affection’ or sumptuous signature string and horn arrangements all rearing their head again here, or lyrical, with the title track and its closer ‘Summer’s Gone’ both tipping their hat to ‘Funtimes in Babylon’, the opening song on debut Fear Fun and hence Misty’s career itself.

There’s something to be said about artists and their impulses to keep returning to the same questions, grasping at answers that remain elusive, walking in circles and hoping for different results. There’s something to be said for noticing the game’s over and it’s time to walk away. It’s been twelve years since the ever prescient Reverend introduced himself with the aim of “authentically bogus rather than bogusly authentic.” The world has changed and perhaps his unique brand of pigheaded, sincere irony simply doesn’t feel as revolutionary or useful as it once was. Father John Misty is now a certified commercial success with a viral TikTok hit and a Lana Del Rey cosign under his belt. He’s already released a greatest hits compilation, for goodness’ sake. And if this album were to be his last, he’s primed to walk out on something of a near-career high.

Jonathan Wilson’s executive production shines as brightly as ever. Sawlike strings and smooth keys tumble into a seductive, smoky funk on the psychedelic ‘Josh Tillman and the Accidental Overdose’ (the most FJM title of all time). This album’s greatest hits entry (‘I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All’) kicks out an infectious strut under pithy, cynical one-liners (‘Now with your genius for picking battles, it’s no wonder every helmet is too small’), pulling at societal loose threads that only someone as louche as FJM could investigate. He makes a mockery of mockery. He’s the only joker the 21st century deserves. But for all his attempts at ironic detachment, he can’t stop himself from earnestly indulging in those beautiful, golden-age backing tracks. Lana may deliberately blur the lines between reality and performance, Father John makes it easy to delineate, when his blatant cynicism languishes over such extraordinary beauty.

And so, at the end (and restart) of it all, when all is said and done (again), who’s to say whether this is the last we’ll see of Father John Misty, other than the man himself? If he’s heading for retirement, then what a closing statement. However, don’t be surprised if he walks back in with a fresh suit and a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, ready to deliver the same sweet, refined sermon one final(?) time.