Album Review: Father John Misty - Pure Comedy

It's the exception rather than the rule for musicians to find commercial success after the age of 30. It's equally unheard of for success to come after quitting your day job as a drummer in a well-known Seattle band in order to reinvent your fledgling solo career and then making not one but two critically acclaimed, and commercially viable, records back to back.

Father John Misty did all this, so it's fair to say that anticipation for album number three was running high. With much more piano-led tracks than on previous stuff, there's a continuing sense of a person who is completely aghast at the current state of the world (America), and perhaps his own reluctant success, on Pure Comedy. Whether the album reaches the heights of previous efforts is debatable; the lead single and title track is great —a study on apathy that sounds much like a sequel to Bored In The USA. However, Leaving LA is where things start to get testy — mainly because, at a staggering 13 minutes, it's just too damn long.

Where Fear Fun and I Love You, Honeybear were entertaining despite the sarcasm, here there doesn't seem to be any silver lining underneath all the vitriol. But perhaps that's just the way things are for now.