Man buns and skinny jeans out in full force, the hipster energy of the early 2010s palpable and somewhat laughable, in May Week we witnessed the much-anticipated arrival of Josh Tillman in Cambridge. Serving mainly as a May Ball replacement activity for my friends and I, we had not really expected an artist of such renown to grace the Corn Exchange with his presence, so we snapped tickets up the day that they were released.

The support act Loren Kramar (who I had never heard of), certainly entranced us from the first note played, and the first lurching dance move onto the stage to join his single guitarist. Known for his soundtrack for the new film On Swift Horses (2025), he served us an intensely theatrical repertoire, exhibiting his immense vocal range and a lavish outfit featuring several sewn rosettes. Kramar’s eccentric, energetic performance included not one but two Lana Del Rey cover songs – which was certainly an unexpected choice. His set was one that left us slightly bemused, but captivated nonetheless!

“His character is a debauched hybrid of preacher turned Hollywood club singer”

Striding onto the stage, Misty’s image is undoubtedly like a philosopher’s. Radiating an authority in performance, his character is a debauched hybrid of preacher turned Hollywood club singer. Regarding the gap between the fictional Father John Misty, and the real life Josh Tillman, there seems to be a deliberately ambiguous overlap. However, even alongside his sarcasm and jokes, he’s almost entirely earnest. With dramatic conversations (crouching mid-song to explain his lyrical woes) and entanglements of irony (dancing like a dad), it’s as if Misty’s performances simply become an exaggerated version of himself, with each album posing different characters and narratives.

The main draw to FJM’s music for me personally, is less about his instrumentation, as scathing as it sounds (for the presence of the magnificent seven-piece band behind him). His sardonic and self-deprecating writing is undisputedly highbrow yet riddled with brilliant mentions of pop culture. My favourite line is in the (deceptively) mellifluous ‘I Love You, Honeybear’, when Tillman drops a reference to the camp horror classic The Omen (1976). When he brazenly proclaims that “the misanthropes next door are probably conceiving a Damien”, his spawn will be of the devil.

Towards the end of his set and during the spectacular title track of his newest album, Mahashmashana, the red Lynchian backdrop lifted (and shredded itself) gradually to reveal a gaping black hole. The song is characteristic for the style of Tillman, meditating existentially on the lack of grand experience for humanity after we pass (“there’s no baby in the king cake, there’s no figure on the cross”) despite claiming riches and religion. He flips the bird to the apocalypse in a way asserts a strange quality of comfort or relish to the certainty of nothing.

“Sardonic and self-deprecating writing is undisputedly highbrow yet riddled with brilliant mentions of pop culture”

However, Father John’s staging was anything but understated. My favourite moment of the entire set was during ‘Nothing Good Ever Happens at the Goddamn Thirsty Crow’, on the line “if you try that cat and mouse sh*t you’ll get bitten”, when manically, the lighting in a split second flashed into an insane red strobe. The filmic-ness of Father John Misty is pulled from a combination of his 70s folk rock sound and confessional songwriting, often taking on perversely honest narratives. These spiritual themes are undeniably inspired by the likes of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, of whom a young Tillman was able to convince his parents were classified as ‘Christian artists’. I mainly associate him with the more Western oriented of his predecessors, like Midnight Cowboy’s Harry Nilsson, or even the great Glen Campbell.

But ultimately, it’s in oft-times condescending, sheer over-wordiness of his lyricism (and track titles, for that matter) that any pretentious student can revel in. In ‘The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.’, he croons in a holier-than-thou imitation, “and the malaprops make me want to f*cking scream, I wonder if she even knows what that word means”. And the worst thing is, he would be right. But when Father John Misty sings it, I literally don’t know, nor care to find out.