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Father John Misty: Fear Fun

Sub Pop

Though he only recently announced his departure from Fleet Foxes, drummer J. Tillman left the band long before on a metaphysical level, when he fell into a deep, dark depression. Following a soulsearching sojourn along the Pacific Coast Highway, he sought refuge in a spider-infested tree house in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, where he worked up a bunch of songs chronicling his cathartic road trip. It was during that time that Tillman rose from the ashes of his sorrow as Father John Misty. And after bringing his demos to producer/songwriter Jonathan Wilson in early 2011, his artistic rebirth was consummated in the form of Fear Fun, a brilliant, freewheeling collection of tunes rife with equal amounts of humor and introspection that walks the sonic tightrope between Nilsson Schmilsson and Arthur Russell, evidenced on tracks like “I’m Writing a Novel” and “This Is Sally Hatchet.” This is “Misty” Mountain Hop for the Tumblr era.