Wry songs about mortality burst forth in living colour

Singer-songwriter Father John Misty brings the dynamic flourishes of his new LP to London

- Stephen Carlick

Royal Albert Hall, London

Two songs into his encore, just about two hours into his sold-out show at London’s venerated Royal Albert Hall, Father John Misty introduces his gentle 10-minute epic, “So I’m Growing Old on Magic Mountain”. “So,” the singer-songwriter born Joshua Tillman says, lilting his guitar strap around his bearded neck, “here’s yet another interminable meditation on ageing.”

The crowd cheers. They’ve just lured Tillman back to the stage following a standing ovation for “Mahashmashana”, the nineminute, blustering, saxophone-speckled title track from his sixth album, released in November. He’s being characteristically wry, but “another interminable meditation on ageing” is precisely what they want.

Tillman is at a unique point in his career. Once something of an indie rock enfant terrible, well-known for his sardonic online presence (which satirised online self-promotion and indie rock stereotypes) and his pull-quote-generating interviews, Tillman all but disappeared from social media and even the music press in 2018. He declined promotional interviews for that year’s