It’s been a minute since Josh Tillman made an appearance – and since I’ve regularly dropped in a music post. Or writing. I’ve been busy with a move, but now that’s wrapping up and I have the time and focus for two of my loves: words and music.
Most “long” songs are over-ambitious duds, but the 13:11 long “Leaving LA” goes right in on Tillman’s relationship to fame and the name tag he wears on stage. If a musician is going to wax eternal, they might as well do it about their struggle with their own constructed facade, their relationships, and how they ended up on stage in the first place. Tillman does that here.
And the lyrics are such good, demi-allusionary lit shit:
You can hear it all over the airwaves
The manufactured gasp of the final days
If that isn’t perfect for the corporate-spectacle, Entertainment-industry era we’re surviving, nothing is.
The mythology of Father John Misty is a strange thing: Josh Tillman quit the Fleet Foxes, went into the desert, did a bunch of drugs, and came back out with an entirely new musical vocabulary, self-assured about what kind of music he wanted to make. If you want to hear what an artist completely re-inventing themself sounds like, do a search for “J Tillman” and “Josh Tillman” tracks, and then pop on anything from the album Fear, Fun.
He addresses the stage name, the constructed popular myths, and how these apply to artists at large. He mentions how this dark album, and this song in particular, might turn off some of his fans, an easily criticized bunch – the David Foster Wallace acolytes of music, if you would – who rave on and on about the guy. He sings about almost choking to death in a JCPenney’s as a kid and remembering clearly the song that was playing. He covers, indeed, Leaving LA to move to New Orleans with his wife, Emma. It was there in New Orleans that this concept album was primarily written, and the bleak hopefulness of New Orleans itself seeps through the whole work.
The string compositions croon and dip, breaking up the long lyrical delivery, more subtle and deliberate than the album’s final two (phenomenal) tracks. This is a weird song! People don’t do this!
It’s great.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/0su2KC6STiFIOsrapKMRPP
Tidal: https://tidal.com/track/71983925
Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/track/45069709
I was living on the hill
By the water tower and hiking trails
And when the big one hit I’d have a seat
To watch masters abandon their dogs and dogs run free
Oh baby, it’s time to leave
Take the van and the hearse down to New Orleans
Leave under the gaze of the billboard queens
Five-foot chicks with parted lips selling sweatshop jeans
These L.A. phonies and their bullshit bands
That sound like dollar signs and Amy Grant
So reads the pull quote from my last cover piece
Entitled “The Oldest Man in Folk Rock Speaks”
You can hear it all over the airwaves
The manufactured gasp of the final days
Someone should tell them ’bout the time that they don’t have
To praise the glorious future and the hopeless past
A few things the songwriter needs
Arrows of Love, a mask of Tragedy
But if you want ecstasy or birth control
Just run the tap until the water’s cold
Anything else you can get online
A creation myth or a .45
You’re gonna to need one or the other to survive
Where only the armed or the funny make it out alive
Mara taunts me ‘neath the tree
She’s like, “oh great, that’s just what we all need
Another white guy in 2017
Who takes himself so goddamn seriously”
She’s not far off, the strange thing is
That’s pretty much what I thought when I started this
It took me my whole life to learn to the play the G
But the role of Oedipus was a total breeze
Still I dreamt of garnering all rave reviews
Just believably a little north of God’s own truth
“He’s a national treasure now, and here’s the proof
In the form of his major label debut”
A little less human with each release
Closing the gap between the mask and me
I swear I’ll never do this, but is it okay?
Don’t want to be that guy but it’s my birthday
If everything ends with the photo then I’m on my way
Oh
Oh
Oh
Oh
I watched my old gods all collapse
Were way more violent than my cartoon past
It’s like my father said before he croaked
“Son, you’re killing me, and that’s all folks”
So why is it I’m so distraught
That what I’m selling is getting bought
At some point you just can’t control
What people use your fake name for
So I never learned to play the lead guitar
I always more preferred the speaking parts
Besides there’s always someone willing to
Fill up the spaces that I couldn’t use
Nonetheless, I’ve been practicing my whole life
Washing dishes, playing drums, and getting by
Until I figured, if I’m here then I just might
Conceal my lack of skill here in the spotlights
Maya, the mother of illusions, a beard, and I
2000 years or so since Ovid taught
Night-blooming, teenage rosebuds, dirty talk
And I’m merely a minor fascination to
Manic virginal lust and college dudes
I’m beginning to begin to see the end
Of how it all goes down between me and them
Some 10-verse chorus-less diatribe
Plays as they all jump ship, “I used to like this guy
This new shit really kinda makes me wanna die”
Oh
Oh
Oh
Oh
My first memory of music’s from
The time at JCPenney’s with my mom
The watermelon candy I was choking on
Barbara screaming, “Someone help my son!”
I relive it most times the radio’s on
That “tell me lies, sweet little white lies” song
That’s when I first saw the comedy won’t stop for
Even little boys dying in department stores
So we leave town in total silence
New Year’s Day, it’s 6 o’clock AM
I’ve never seen Sunset this abandoned
Reminds me predictably of the world’s end
It’ll be good to get more space
God knows what all these suckers paid
I can stop drinking and you can write your script
But what we both think now is
Songwriter: Joshua Tillman
© Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.