Video: Father John Misty, ‘Pure Comedy’

Daiana Feuer on January 24th, 2017

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Life is a big scary joke waiting for a punchline. That’s basically at the heart of “Pure Comedy,” the title track from Father John Misty‘s new album, to be released by Sub Pop and Bella Union on April 7. Josh Tillman’s previous record, “I Love You, Honeybear.” had a soulful inclination, and this one does too, tonally, but the subject matter is grim and, reflecting the times, delivers a heap of doom with side of hope. Tillman gets flak for his rants and idiosyncratic behavior at concerts, but if looked at in the context of a world that seems to be unraveling at an astonishing pace, this is just a guy who feels desperate about how much he actually does care and is trying to figure out how to do something about it. So here in the video for “Pure Comedy,” director David Siskin strings together found footage and illustration by Ed Steed of the masses at their worst. Basically the video starts at birth, and scales outwards to the deterioration of humanity. It’s kind of beautiful, the song, but also delivers a sick feeling to the stomach.

Beyond this, there’s a 25-minute film by Grant James about making the album, offering a behind the scenes look at the recording process, interspersed with images of Los Angeles on fire, Tillman smoking too much, and more of that unsettling artwork. Tillman wrote most of the album in 2015 and recorded at United Studios, formerly Ocean Way Studios, this past March. Longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson co-produced the album with Tillman, and the duo, along with Trevor Spencer, mixed it. The resulting 75 minutes of music is as epic as expected, hauntingly beautiful but tragic in its outlook.

Tillman writes: “The joke is that the best we can do is keep on keeping on, which we’ve proven ourselves pathologically adept at. We’re going to save the planet alright, and it will be a glorious sacriﬁce just like the Sky-Man we invented showed us how.”

||| Watch: The video for “Pure Comedy”