Father John Misty
Woodsies, Saturday June 28, 2015
As the sun sinks on a Glastonbury Saturday, what looms is a chance to liberate yourself - potentially for ever - from the person you have been for the past 51 weeks. And who better to sing you to the end of the conventional world than Josh Tillman, whose sixth album as Father John Misty, Mahashmashana, saw him cast aside the character we know so well and had come, perhaps, to tire of.
In June 2025, Misty lives just outside the cremation ground of the Sanskrit album title, re-creating for us a rundown cabaret moldering at the end of the final turnoff before the desert. Oblivion beckons, but here he welcomes the lost souls who have put faith in him to get them through the night.
It works in his favour that the festival’s tight schedule allows him no more than 60 minutes and forces him to focus on delivering the goods without distraction or diversion. Discipline and brevity not being Misty’s traditional fortes, he opens with 10 minutes of the magnificently rumbling I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All, brings matters to a climax with the album’s equally long title track, and somehow fits in another nine songs, ranging from a wonderfully romantic - it really isn’t - Nancy From Now On, which sees smooching couples linking hands in the air, to the closing Real Love Baby, leading many to cast aside inhibitions and swoon before twilight’s last gleaming.
It helps that Mahashmashana is the best collection Tillman has released in years. Mental Health (“Oh, insanity/Babe, it’s indispensable”) is a tremendous invitation to the night ahead; She Cleans Up (“I’m never gonna touch that shit again”) suggests our narrator has already seen what Sunday has in store for us; and, best of all, perhaps, is Josh Tillman And The Accidental Dose, a clearly cautionary tale for which the brilliant band re-create Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire De Melody Nelson in five transcendent minutes.
“Is anyone spiralling?” he enquires, no little concern in his voice. Almost everyone, it appears. “Just dissociate, works for me every time.” For one night only, tomorrow morning holds no fear.
Father John Misty Glastonbury 2025 Setlist:
I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All
Josh Tillman And The Accidental Dose
Mr. Tillman
Being You
Nancy From Now On
Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins)
Mental Health
She Cleans Up
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings
Mahashmashana
Real Love Baby
Follow all of MOJO’s Glastonbury 2025’s coverage HERE!
Photo: Father John Misty, Berlin, Germany April 6, 2015 (Credit: Jana Legler/Redferns)