Review: Father John Misty and Destroyer Live at King’s Theatre, Brooklyn, NY

Father John Misty at The King’s Theatre Brooklyn NY February 25th photo by Bobby Nicohlas lll

The King’s Theatre in Brooklyn, NY is a modern-day concert venue ripped from an Old Hollywood film. The opulent, red curtains draping the stage; the ornate, golden décor dripping from the ceiling; the old-fashioned spotlights positioned meticulously on the platform—even the waiting music aimed to get the audience in the mindset of a classic film, playing folk and modern rock classics, 80s new wave anthems, chamber music, TV theme songs, and more. Only an elegant, almost cinematic performance could match the classy set-up. Joshua Tillman, known as Father John Misty, and Dan Bejar, or Destroyer, did exactly that last night. Delivering two sets that had the grandiose sound of a film score and the simplicity of a traditional yet powerful vocalist, both singer-songwriters left the audience transfixed by their music.

They were putting on a show for us; and while neither included the bells and whistles of a typical concert, their cinema-inspired sets allowed the crowd see their music, which are usually packed with complex and poetic lyricism, in a new light. At least to me, the night at the King’s Theater revealed how much these singers have soundtracked my life: from the days of adolescence, to coming of age, and now adulthood, they’ve had a song for everything. And like myself, they’ve changed too—the lyrics mean different things, the wisdom only age can bring rendered past frustrations useless (and a bit silly), and some points made long ago still ring true.

Destroyer’s opening set could have easily been recorded and pasted into an 80s coming-of-age movie with little to no editing. The opening band had a simple set-up: concentrated at center stage, the members remained straightforward in playing their material. Bejar, donning a loose- fitting gray suit and his signature tousled hair, was fixed at the microphone, only wandering a bit away when either the band spun into an instrumental break, or when he seemingly became absorbed by the density of some of his lyrics, and he needed to concentrate on every one. Yet there was still drama in his simplicity, an adept ability to mesmerize the audience and keep their attention the whole time. Everything about his performance—how the drums punched through the speakers and eardrums, the electric guitar scratches against the heartbeat of the tracks, and his icy, David Bowie-esque vocals floated above the music like fog—felt cinematic, like a film score come to life.

Bejar’s set kept the secrets about his upcoming record Dan’s Boogie, which will be released on March 28, airtight. The singles released already (“Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” and “Bologna”) gave some clues to the spacious, airy, and 80s synth-heavy sound building the album, but none of the songs from Dan’s Boogie were performed last night. Instead, he stuck to older tracks like “Times Square,” “Poor in Love,” “Cue Synthesizer,” and “Notorius Lighting” to name a few. As a fan, I honestly found nothing wrong with it: “The Music Lovers” immediately quelled the chattering crowd with Bejar’s resonant opening lyric “Feeling fine, but it must be the wine / ‘cause it’s April 27th , and my baby’s still dying on me,” and that first kickdrum pulse felt electric. The speech-singing and vintage rock band performance of “Tinseltown Swimming in Blood” filled my lungs with the same, crisp, energetic air it did when I listened to it for the first time as a teenager. Destroyer reimagined “Cue Synthesizer” as a punkier, rockier track than its original, relaxed and groovy recording, letting the band crash out into chaos as Bejar screamed, “Cue guitar! Cue synthesizer!” Perhaps the more anthemic adjustments to the tracks—playing them with drums that echo louder and further, a messy electric guitar that lingers on every reverberating strum, and a voice that projects to the highest corner of the back balcony’s wall—were Bejar’s way of subtly telling us the direction Dan’s Boogie could follow. Or perhaps, he just wanted music that would sound epic in a concert hall. Either way, his performance was divine.

Walking on stage to Skeeter Davis’ “The End of The World,” Father John Misty’s performance already channeled the energy of a film noir, or a tragic romance, or a moody drama about a complex male protagonist from the mid 20 th Century. Yet we’d soon touch upon all the genres of the Golden Age of Hollywood through music: a 70s action film with a groovy, jam band rendition of “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All,” followed by the loose, psychedelic art film world of “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose.” Classics like “Buddy’s Renedzvous” channeled those film noir scenes of somber reflection in a late-night diner, from the rich yet mournful sax solo that could instantly bring a tear to the eyes, to Tillman’s subdued performance that involved shuffling about with his hands in his pockets and staring at his feet, to the inherent sadness of the lyrics that miss a person who can no longer be the age one knew them by. “Nancy From Now On” felt like a dream ballet, as the ethereal “oohs” in the chorus spilled over the blurry guitars, twinkly percussion, and gentle acoustic guitar. The whole evening felt like flipping channels through his career, revisiting the favorites like they’re recorded re-runs, noticing new details all while looking back at the memories they once gave us.

In a way, Father John Misty’s concert embodied the ethos of his recent record Mahashmashana, which is Sanskrit for “great cremation ground,” as he told World Café last November. He began with “Fun Times In Babylon,” the first track off his 2012 debut Fear Fun, where the lyrics embrace a youthful, reckless approach to life. “Look out Hollywood, here I come!” he cries out, referencing both the institution symbolic of the American dream of an artist, as well as the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles (the subject and title of another track on the record). A couple tracks later, he played “Summer’s Gone,” the Mahashmashana finale that calls back to his first ever track. “The place I knew is gone,” he lamented under the yellow glow of the spotlight as the audience froze like silent statues. “There’s no fun left to fear, but / To Georgie, it’s still Babylon…” Closing the main set with the grand, crowd-unifying anthem “Mahashmashana,” Tillman put his entire discography behind all of us, welcoming the “next universal dawn” with a fresh, blank slate.

Father John Misty prefaced some of his older work, leaving the Chloe and the Next 20th Century tracks, as well as the Mahashmashana ones, to speak for themselves. “This next song’s by a super-precocious 30-something year-old,” he quipped before playing I Love You, Honeybear’s “Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow,” remarking that the older he gets, the weirder it becomes to play it live. During the song—the best performance of the evening instrumentally and vocally, as the gorgeous swelling of the violins, coupled with the sensual saxophone solo and powerful growl behind all his forceful belting, were incomparable in their beauty—he tugged himself all over the place, pantomimed lyrics, and sung every line like he still believed every thought behind it. We knew it was a joke at this point; while the language is florid and poetic, it’s also the graphic musings of a woman, now ten years older than she was back then, written in the perspective of an equally younger man. He made a similar remark after playing a stripped, solo acoustic version of “I Went To The Store One Day,” admitting he sometimes imagines how people engage with this track about meeting his wife for the first time and falling in love. “Did you have a good cigarette?” he joked, “I love to imagine you guys smoking a cigarette to this song.” He seems to have a whole meta-approach to looking at his catalogue, like there’s a version of the song as the combination of lyrics, story, and composition, and another as the cultural object that people reference, build their own narratives around, and transform into something else (like the perfect soundtrack for a moody, pensive scene in this case). Moreover, it’s fascinating to see how Father John Misty seems to view his past self as a different author entirely, respecting that writer’s original intent with the song by playing it totally earnestly, all while acknowledging that he, perhaps, wouldn’t write about his wife that way anymore. In his own words, “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.”

It’s odd when a movie ends, and life continues happening. The physical reels it’s printed on warp with time, the quality gets grainier, the jokes fall flat on younger generations of watchers, the meaning gets reinterpreted. Perhaps that’s how we’re meant to look at Father John Misty’s career, now that it’s reached a sense of completeness with Mahashmashana. His life extends beyond the realms of I Love You, Honeybear’s early, ecstatic praises of his wife, beyond the spirited chaos of Fear Fun, and even some of the anxious, existential ramblings of God’s Favorite Customer and Pure Comedy. While much of these songs still exist and can be listened to in their original, earnest, way, they encapsulate specific albeit long-gone moments in all our lives, and we’re allowed to keep revisiting them with new thoughts, a changed approach to life, and more wisdom.