Father John Misty gives Vancouver fans a special night

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      #fatherjohnmisty "These laptops are so confusing"

      A post shared by @dillonjhansen on May 26, 2017 at 11:13pm PDT

      At Malkin Bowl on Friday, May 26

      One thing you can say for sure about Josh Tillman is that he knows how to delay gratification. He spent a significant chunk of his Malkin Bowl set playing songs from Pure Comedy, his third LP under the Father John Misty moniker. It's a wonderful record, filled with Tillman's usual pithy and sardonic, but never less than heartfelt, reflections on religion, human nature, and life in the United States in the Age of Trump. It also happens to be an album filled almost entirely with slow piano ballads. What's more, it was released just a few weeks ago, meaning that many in the audience for this sold-out performance had likely not even heard it yet.

      While that sounds like a recipe for testing a crowd's patience, it was in fact highly effective. The songs on Pure Comedy are all thematically linked, and it made sense to play them together. They were also nowhere near as spare as the recorded versions; Tillman's usual backing of guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards was complemented by a mini orchestra of strings, brass, and woodwinds. In all, there were 15 people on-stage (if I counted correctly). The fleshed-out arrangements made for some show-stopping crescendos, including the climactic moment in "When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell to Pay", in which Tillman dropped to his knees as if in prayer and beseeched the God he doesn't believe in, "Oh, my Lord/We just want light in the dark/Some warmth in the cold."

       

      'these mammals are hell-bent on fashioning new gods so they go on being godless animals' #fatherjohnmisty

      A post shared by Savannah! (@savmcghee) on May 26, 2017 at 11:53pm PDT

      Tillman did eventually dip into the Father John Misty back catalogue, reaching back to 2012's Fear Fun for "Funtimes in Babylon", "Nancy From Now On", and a moderately grungy "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings", and to 2015's I Love You, Honeybear for the ironically romantic title track and "True Affection", which kicked the bpm up a notch. Through it all, Tillman shone. The man can sing like a motherfucker, seemingly effortlessly, and he appears to be constitutionally incapable of singing an off-key note, even when he's hopping off the stage to connect with the crowd or bending his lanky frame backwards in impossible-looking ways. That magical goddamned voice, combined with the natural spectacle of nightfall settling on Stanley Park's towering evergreens, made for a special night—even if Father John Misty made us wait a while for the songs we knew.

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