In-depth True Affection: A Comprehensive Guide to Father John Misty

Josh Tillman’s Father John Misty has been burned onto the peripheries of the 2010s as one of the most forward-thinking, hip-shaking, innovative songwriters of the now. He follows in the path writers such as Loudon Wainwright III and Randy Newman carved before him, but with the angst of a rock star wired up to a lie detector, his brutally honest lyrics are a refreshing change to the musical stratosphere.

Misty’s inspirations draw from the huge topics of culture, love and religion, which he churns up in his psyche and sings out in his charismatic and confessional persona. He manages to simultaneously make your sides split (“She blames her excess on my influence but gladly hoovers all my drugs”) and offers lines which make you stop in your tracks during the course of an album (“Now, I’ve got a lifetime to consider all the ways I grow more disappointing to you as my beauty warps and fades.”) But where exactly did this ‘aimless, fake drifter, horny manchild Moma’s boy’ spring from?