2018 Grammy Award Nominee!
Best Alternative Music Album: Pure Comedy
2LP With 1 Of 4 Different (Random) Cover Color Schemes!
One of Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2017!
Note: Four different album covers will be distributed at random - we have no control over which covers we receive.
Pure Comedy, Father John Mistys third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity.
Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. Tillman has released two widely acclaimed albums Fear Fun (2012) and I Love You, Honeybear (2015) and the recent Real Love Baby single as Father John Misty, and recently contributed to songs by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi.
While we could say a lot about Pure Comedy including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen we think its best to let its creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman:
Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like love, culture, family, etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence.
Something like that.
Pure Comedy was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Mistys longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).
"Josh Tillman's shtick as Father John Misty is to shock you with uncomfortable truths about modern American life while soothing you with mellow, Laurel Canyon-style rock - or so it would seem on Pure Comedy. As with his first two full-lengths, Tillman produced the album with Jonathan Wilson, a purveyor of vintage L.A. psychedelia. But Pure Comedy is distinctly more solemn and sedate than before, and perhaps that's the appropriate tone when one sings of humanity's insignificance or a civilization in decline..." - Pam Torno, The Absolute Sound, July/August 2017
"Much has been made of the marriage of his conventionally beautiful voice and accessible instrumentation to his nihilistic and irony-soaked lyricism. This record is definitive proof that that relationship is working, lasting and getting better with age." - Mack Hayden, Paste Magazine
"In which Josh Tillman updates the Seventies singer-songwriter tradition for our dystopian, post-ironic era, using its melodicism and 'sincerity' as both comfort food and grim punchline. 'Bedding Taylor Swift/Every night inside the Oculus Rift' was the most quoted couplet, from the culture-indicting 'Total Entertainment Forever,' a send up of virtual reality and Kanye West-style audience bait. But the most impressive writing is 'Leaving L.A.,' a 13-minute Dylan-esque anti-hero epic that locates Tilman himself in its crosshairs ('Oh, great, that's just what they all need/Another white guy in 2017/Who takes himself so goddamn seriously'). Predicting his own backlash was just another way he seemed to be one step ahead of nearly everyone this year." - Rolling Stone, 50 Best Albums of 2017
Features:
Double LP
Gatefold Jacket
1 of 4 Different Cover Color Schemes with Custom Dust Sleeves - distributed at random
Limited Time MP3 Coupon
Selections:
LP 1
Side 1:
1. Pure Comedy
2. Total Entertainment Forever
3. Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution
4. Ballad Of The Dying Man
Side 2:
1. Birdie
2. Leaving LA
LP 2
Side 3:
1. A Bigger Paper Bag
2. When The God Of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay
3. Smoochie
4. Two Wildly Different Perspectives
5. The Memo
Side 4:
1. So I'm Growing Old On Magic Mountain
2. In Twenty Years Or So
Best Alternative Music Album: Pure Comedy
2LP With 1 Of 4 Different (Random) Cover Color Schemes!
One of Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2017!
Note: Four different album covers will be distributed at random - we have no control over which covers we receive.
Pure Comedy, Father John Mistys third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity.
Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. Tillman has released two widely acclaimed albums Fear Fun (2012) and I Love You, Honeybear (2015) and the recent Real Love Baby single as Father John Misty, and recently contributed to songs by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi.
While we could say a lot about Pure Comedy including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen we think its best to let its creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman:
Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like love, culture, family, etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence.
Something like that.
Pure Comedy was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Mistys longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).
"Josh Tillman's shtick as Father John Misty is to shock you with uncomfortable truths about modern American life while soothing you with mellow, Laurel Canyon-style rock - or so it would seem on Pure Comedy. As with his first two full-lengths, Tillman produced the album with Jonathan Wilson, a purveyor of vintage L.A. psychedelia. But Pure Comedy is distinctly more solemn and sedate than before, and perhaps that's the appropriate tone when one sings of humanity's insignificance or a civilization in decline..." - Pam Torno, The Absolute Sound, July/August 2017
"Much has been made of the marriage of his conventionally beautiful voice and accessible instrumentation to his nihilistic and irony-soaked lyricism. This record is definitive proof that that relationship is working, lasting and getting better with age." - Mack Hayden, Paste Magazine
"In which Josh Tillman updates the Seventies singer-songwriter tradition for our dystopian, post-ironic era, using its melodicism and 'sincerity' as both comfort food and grim punchline. 'Bedding Taylor Swift/Every night inside the Oculus Rift' was the most quoted couplet, from the culture-indicting 'Total Entertainment Forever,' a send up of virtual reality and Kanye West-style audience bait. But the most impressive writing is 'Leaving L.A.,' a 13-minute Dylan-esque anti-hero epic that locates Tilman himself in its crosshairs ('Oh, great, that's just what they all need/Another white guy in 2017/Who takes himself so goddamn seriously'). Predicting his own backlash was just another way he seemed to be one step ahead of nearly everyone this year." - Rolling Stone, 50 Best Albums of 2017
Features:
Double LP
Gatefold Jacket
1 of 4 Different Cover Color Schemes with Custom Dust Sleeves - distributed at random
Limited Time MP3 Coupon
Selections:
LP 1
Side 1:
1. Pure Comedy
2. Total Entertainment Forever
3. Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution
4. Ballad Of The Dying Man
Side 2:
1. Birdie
2. Leaving LA
LP 2
Side 3:
1. A Bigger Paper Bag
2. When The God Of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay
3. Smoochie
4. Two Wildly Different Perspectives
5. The Memo
Side 4:
1. So I'm Growing Old On Magic Mountain
2. In Twenty Years Or So
