<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

The Listener

Humour, sweetness and sincerity: Father John Misty's Chloë and the Next Twentieth Century reviewed

23 April 2022

9:00 AM

23 April 2022

9:00 AM

 Grade: A–

In which Josh Tillman reimagines the whole back catalogue of 20th-century American pop music (except for rock), tilting heavily in favour of the 1930s-1950s. Lush strings, polite jazz and sometimes cocktail piano, big band stuff etc., plus the expected Tillman mordant humour and some unexpected sweetness and sincerity. There’s the country torch of Patsy Cline on ‘Kiss Me (I Loved You)’, the cabaret samba of ‘Olvidado (Otro Momento)’, Rodgers’ and Hart’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ homage on ‘Funny Girl’, and what we’re told is an attempt to kind of rewrite Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ on ‘Goodbye Mr Blue’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close