Father John Misty is an end-times jazz man on Chloë And The Next 20th Century

Art dealing with societal collapse can be quite jarring. Josh Tillman (a.k.a. Father John Misty), however, feasts on the decay of culture, morals—the disintegration of everything, really—as if it’s the sweetest thing in the world. His music can come off as bleak, cynical, even conceited at times; but the results are consistently poignant and often sonically beautiful.

His most recent effort, Chloë And The Next 20^th Century, takes the topic of decay and soars with it. For all the smoky alleys and dimmed lounges it evokes, the record is one of the more hopeful and modest Father John Misty releases to date. At face value, it’s an album about brokenness and love, and it delivers these concepts via a transportive journey into the cavernous jazz of the 1930s and ’50s, and folk of the ’60s and ’70s. Filled to the brim with modest nocturnes, lounge, bossa nova, and even circus-music-aping jams, it’s a late-night stumble through the backdoors of infatuation, the trippy layers of history, and Tillman’s sometimes surprising musical influences.

To call this record “hopeful” may be confusing upon first listen. Opening track “Chloë” is about the downfall of a celebrity (or celebrity in general), while the closing track conjures a band of Nazis playing during a father-daughter dance. Dark, yes, but Father John Misty records have always dabbled in the scorching worlds of self-destruction: There’s the psychedelia and intense self-perception of someone who has little left to lose on Fear Fun; the measured mortality of God’s Favorite Customer; and, of course, Pure Comedy’s viewing room onto a barren, Hieronymus Bosch-inspired landscape of self-indulgence and total societal annihilation.

Chloë, on the other hand, builds a warm, underground club in the wasteland of our world. There are songs about lovers remaining strangers and dumbstruck fools falling for each other, and musically, it is sleek. The whole record carries a surprising confidence in regard to affection, survival, and making ends meet.

The album contains a real bleakness, especially in the latter of the two titular songs, “The Next 20th Century.” “Come build your burial ground on our burial grounds / but you won’t kill death that way / I don’t know about you, but I’ll take love songs if this century’s here to stay,” Tillman sings over a Western prog tune. The gloom continues in tracks that touch on topics like overworked parents and radiant yet tainted icons. But the whole album has a genuine mood, an image of Tillman stepping-to or smiling through the croon, in full character mode, always with love on the brain.

The nostalgic record marries Tillman’s adept lyricism with voluminous references to an era heavily steeped in excess, wealth, and other Fitzgerald-esque elements. History’s repetition and the dissolution of everything stands at the forefront—but love remains more centralized still. Embattled, sleazy love, another wary sign of hope.

The record lilts and shakes, tracked by gorgeous, blossoming horns and strings. The instrumentation of Father John Misty has always been on point, and here, Jonathan Wilson’s pristine production and the band are astounding. They capture an orchestrated scoring well-suited to each song, as though Tillman and Wilson are arranging the ideal feng shui for each track’s living quarters.

Despite the jazz-era signifiers of it all, Chloë is largely a psychedelic record, from the “Mr. Kite” waltzing of “(Everything But) Her Love,” with its rondo flute outro, to the phantom tremolo of “Kiss Me (I Loved You).” The latter track is about a character who wants to get back with his ex while her ferryman lover is stranded. It comes off as shady and desperate, but paired with jazzy solemnity and a sentiment that life can be more sweet than bitter.

The aforementioned “Chloë,” the other half of the titular songs, offers the tale of the fall of a superstar through a smitten protagonist’s eyes, against the wishes of his family. Tillman’s lyrics roll out quickly in a swing, “The more they abhor you / the more I adore you,” with mentions of some lifting of prescribed drugs and a pitch-black soul.

The album’s seemingly antiquated tropes of depression and Cold War paranoia enter the modern era via references to Benzos, Batman, and David Letterman. Far more than a vignette of love and war, Chloë is a self-aware character study in how some things never change, told through the gaze of one of the 21st century’s most consistently dour but talented pop songwriters. His coy perspective binds the ills of the jazz age to the endless-information age, in ways that are timely, if not exhausting. Or perhaps it’s just exhausting to watch the flames rise.