Steven Mirkin on June 26th, 2018

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“God’s Favorite Customer,” Josh Tillman’s latest album under the name Father John Misty, presents him as a somewhat chastened character, holed up at a New York hotel, trying to put together a life that’s fallen apart.

But his show at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night (part of KCRW’s World Festival) presented him in his full Misty-ness: a man whose ego is as large as his talent, a performer who both revels in and is repelled by 21st-century mores and styles, a folk-rock Kanye West, a Bryan Ferry for millennial douchebags, a proudly inauthentic man longing for something real.

If the new album is a step back from last year’s overstuffed, word-drunk “Pure Comedy,” the Bowl show was proudly maximalist. He was backed by a 16-piece band, who preceded him on the stage, playing a noir-ish overture with a moaning trumpet moonlighting from the soundtrack of “Chinatown.” It was accompanied by high-contrast, black-and-white footage of the streets of Hollywood, with fires engulfing houses and landmarks, leading into “Funtimes in Babylon,” from way back in 2012, with the refrain “Look out Hollywood, here I come.”

Is that a boast or threat? You can’t really tell, and that’s part of what makes Tillman/Misty such an intriguing figure. He doesn’t lack ambition. It’s takes a certain amount of chutzpah to conflate climate change with one’s mood, as he does in “Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution.” Dressed like a nightmare of 1974 Yacht Rock cool: a white suit and white shirt with a few buttons undone, his hair and beard perfectly tousled. The songs pull from that era as well. Touches of John Lennon (the chunky descending chords of “Hangout at the Gallows,” where he’s lashed by questions from an intrusive press), Harry Nilsson (“Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution”), Jeff Lynne (“Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest Of Them All”) or a country-ish, heavily medicated Jimmy Webb (“Ballad of the Dying Man”). He’s backed by a dense, smartly arranged band. There’s always something interesting happening, from the way the horns drape a fuzz guitar on “Please Don’t Die,” to the apocalyptic freak-out as the world ends in “Pure Comedy.”

There’s a danger of wrong-footing it every time you think you’ve got a handle on him. The self-involvement on display in songs such as “Ballad of the Dying Man” — which begins as a petulant complaint about “idiots, dilettantes and fools” — can be breathtaking, but it’s countered by a wry self-knowledge, as the song concludes by admitting “we’ll all be wrong someday.”

On the other hand, when he reaches for sincerity, as he does on “Real Love Baby,” he can come off as smarmy; you want to believe him, but you’re wary that he just might pull the rug out from under you. Is he a sensitive guy disgusted by an out-of-control world, or a conceited lout faking sincerity to get laid? You’re never quite sure. But Tillman/Misty’s songs with their discursive melodies keep you interested.