Father John Misty
Chloë and the Next 20th Century
Bella Union/Sub Pop
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The “Is Father John Misty serious?” question is overblown. The first time I heard the scalding “what’s your politics / what’s your religion” line on “Hangout at the Gallows” or the devastating “I hate to say it, but each other’s all we’ve got” on “Pure Comedy,” I knew this guy was serious. Misty’s work is cerebral and snarky, but its beating heart is vulnerable and deeply emotional.
So, uh, enter Chloë and the Next Twentieth Century, in which I am proven wrong, or maybe not. Hard to say.
For every Misty album since I Love You Honeybear (2015), I’ve walked away from my first listen feeling like I was seeing the world in a different way. That didn’t happen this time. I have two hypotheses for why this happened:
One, this album is just worse.
Two, this album represents a new kind of Misty album that I’m not fully able to get because I’m looking for similarities to his other work. I’m waiting for the in-your-face anguish of “The Ideal Husband” instead of “(Everything But) Her Love.” It’s possible I’m just reading this wrong because I’m expecting something else.
Let’s explore each hypothesis in turn.
Evidence for Hypothesis #1: This Album is Just Worse.
A. Homogenous orchestration and melody. After hearing the album a dozen times, I find myself reading the track list and saying “wait, which one is that?” Most tracks on the record lean into a grandiose big band sound; apart from a few standout tracks (“Q4,” “Chloë,” “The Next 20th Century”), the smaller variations aren’t enough to keep the songs from running together in my head. Misty’s usually reliable hooks are much less present on this album; when the slyly catchy chorus to “Buddy’s Rendezvous” comes up halfway through the record, you realize that much of what you’ve heard up to that point isn’t especially memorable.
B. There are lots of women, with whom Mr. Misty has a complicated lyrical relationship. In interviews, he’s suggested that his uglier songs are an honest depiction of misogyny, an excising of the bad parts of himself, not an endorsement of that behavior.
Even if this is true, the women in Misty’s songs usually exist either to a) stand in for a concept or type of person or b) offer a foil (either positive or negative) for Misty. Either way, they’re not treated as real, vivid people with complex internal psyches (i.e., the way that Misty obsessively positions himself.) You will notice that there are rarely, if ever, men in this role.
C. The dude sounds bored. Misty’s not just a singer; he’s also an actor. Sometimes he’s full of undeserved swagger (“Date Night,”) sometimes he’s angry (“The Ideal Husband,”) sometimes he’s despondent (“The Memo”).
For much of his output, these vocal maneuvers tell us how we’re supposed to feel, especially in the face of his unreliable narrators. But for large parts of Chloë, there’s little detectable emotion in his voice (“Goodbye Mr. Blue” could be a heartbreaker if delivered differently.) It makes interpreting the songs way more like a reading comprehension exercise than it does feeling anything.
I find Hypothesis #1 compelling.
So, all of this said, let’s get into Hypothesis #2: This is a new album that needs to be experienced on its own terms.
A. Homogenous orchestration and melody. This is Chloë’s stroke of genius. Instead of weaving its dynamism through the different tracks like Misty’s earlier work does, the record bets all of its money on a single guitar riff. And let me tell you, it is a goddamn scorcher, like a bolt of lightning at the very end of the record. The first time I heard it, I let out an awe-inspired “finally.”
It comes during “The Next 20th Century,” a track that stands alone as the runaway masterpiece from the album, waking you up from the schmaltzy haze of the last forty minutes.
This effect is perfectly appropriate given the lyrics of “The Next 20th Century.” The song posits that Western culture has learned nothing from the sins of its past and is doomed to repeat them, and any happiness in our lives is built on a foundation of those sins. The record’s final lyrics, “I’ll take the love songs / and the great distance / that they came” is admitting failure—the love songs that defined the record are an illusion.
The need to wake us up with the guitar riff reveals that. So Misty is telling us that he does not know how to exist in this world without neglecting—and by neglecting, repeating—the tragedies that have come before us. On Pure Comedy, he viciously argued in favor of art as a way to recover the social contract—but here he seems to say that it’s too late for goodness, and so art is all that’s left.
The ending is dispiriting, but certainly full of the emotional vivacity that defines Misty’s output. He nailed it.
B. More women. Nope, there’s no positive side to this one. It continues to be bad. Moving on.
C. The dude sounds bored. Extrapolating from the point about the sound, Misty’s disaffection throughout most of the album is in fact something we can read as character acting. He is halfheartedly playing the crooner role; the disaffection is a way of acknowledging that the love songs he’s singing are not morally clean or uncomplicated, and so leaning into them with a wholehearted embrace would be wrong. He’s singing along, but not exactly singing.
So, which hypothesis is right? Is Chloë and the Next Twentieth Century just worse than Misty’s other records or an album whose aesthetic choices and concept are inseparable?
I once had a teacher who said, “If you’re ever asked an either/or question about art, the answer is probably ‘both.’” I think this advice holds up. The album is a little one-note and I don’t see myself listening to it as much as I listen to some of Father John Misty’s other work. Some of the lyrics are full of Misty’s beloved wit, but others (“Olvidado (Otra Momento),” “Kiss Me (I Loved You”) don’t bring a lot to the table.
But the last song totally rules and is a brilliant foil to everything else that happens on the album. You need the monotony of the rest of the record in order to make the revelation work.
Is it worth the price? Oh, to hear that guitar line for the first time again.
Notable Tracks: “Buddy’s Rendezvous” | “Q4” | “The Next 20th Century”
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