His last release Greatish Hits: I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said to Crawl was completely unnecessary. Father John Misty is one of the few artists who still revel in the full album format, immersing himself in sounds and themes over a record’s run time. His albums tell long stories, tie together disparate ideas, and can’t truly be experienced by picking out singles. That deeper exploration, his fine line between sarcasm/honesty, and his dynamic musical ear make each full length its adventure. Now comes Mahashmashana, which shifts that whole idea right on its head as the artist delivers a sampler of past styles, from the flamboyantly bombastic to the hushed confessional, and hints at where he may head in the future.
Josh Tillman’s (semi) alter ego wastes no time, exploding out to the gate with a huge orchestra-based dramatic swelling, as the title track’s layers of instrumentation can overpower the singing at times. “Mahashmashana” is the Sanskrit word for “great cremation ground,” as Tillman sings about “the corpse dance” while mixing the profound and mundane in a cosmic sense, recalling his work on Pure Comedy with a grander musical scope. Produced by Tillman and Drew Erickson, the sonics on this album are exquisite as usual, and when the saxophone gets swallowed by the strings here, it is intentional.
The funky electro buzzing of “She Cleans Up” shifts gears in jarring fashion, using direct inspiration from Viagra Boys “Punk Rock Loser” to glam up the rock with distorted beats in an album outlier. The trippy acid tale of “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose” flows out with lightly grooving sounds in a more laid-back, God’s Favorite Customer fashion, while “Mental Health” brings back in the grandiose, sweeping orchestration along with more of Tillman’s detached irony and some super cool hand drums.
The album centerpiece, “Screamland,” is the high point of Mahashmashana. The song starts with piano and grows softly, pulsing ominously before freaking out in a chorus of electro-swirling chaos. Lyrically Tillman is in full flight, stating his mantra with lines like “Love must find a way, love must find a way/After every desperate measure, just a miracle will take” then, amongst the musical maelstrom of the chorus, he tells the listener to “Stay young/Get numb/Keep dreaming, oh Screamland” in tossed off fashion before a harsh direct cut clips the song. This electro-injection seems ripe for more of Tillman’s experiments.
“Being You” drifts and wanders aimlessly as Tillman focuses on what it is like to be someone else, which is not his strong suit. At the same time “I Guess Time Makes Fools Of Us All” is grandiose disco funk (that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on I Love You, Honeybear) that can lyrically lose focus at times but hits hardest when Tillman envisions himself in Vegas doing those greatest hits to end his career. The album wraps with a touch of Chloë and the Next 20th Century sound via “Summer’s Gone” as the acceptance of aging closes things on a bleaker cinematic note.
On past releases, each album was a way for Tillman to explore and blur the line between himself and Father John Misty as the records dug into a musical niche. On the career-spanning Mahashmashana, things are not connected musically, but they still manage to thematically tie together lyrically around Tillman’s thoughts on aging and death. The self-centered artist still conjures up thought-provoking and, most importantly, enjoyable songs.
