Father John Misty’s gospel, if the slippery singer-songwriter had one, would be comically uninspiring. Love transforms you, but not much. Progress comes, not for long. When the times call for great social responsibility, such defeatism might sound convenient, but the indie-rock playboy born Josh Tillman takes cynicism all the way to the pulpit. He has faith in his non-belief, and summons you along with him.
A sold-out Eventim Apollo follows this dubious commentator into the dark. Tillman strides out in a trim suit and black shoes so sleekly polished they seem to reflect nonexistent chandeliers. He opens with a bleakly beguiling synth ballad (The Next 20th Century), before spending nearly two hours juggling screeds of social calamity with odes to romantic joy. He patrols the stage, taunting a spotlight’s cusp. Then his hips loosen. He primps for the front row, drops to his knees and theatrically pricks the air, cuing a cymbal crash. He has us.
His suave getup and old-Hollywood style – drawn from last year’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century LP – recall an era when entertainers were sexy and uncontroversial, if not always well-behaved. Could this, you find yourself wondering, be some sort of provocation? He covers Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman, perhaps dreaming of simpler times for horny male songwriters, or perhaps not.
Inscrutable though he may be, Tillman is a delectable pop craftsman. “As you can tell from all the fake jazz music you heard earlier, I really struggled in the pandemic,” he jokes. His solution was to write sprightlier songs, honoured here with a brass trio that completes an eight-piece band.
Their new live arrangements elevate the love songs while dragging the jeremiads into thrilling depths. Pure Comedy, iffy on record, is transformed: squalling saxophones and synths give its mishmash of polemic and pseudoscience an air of profundity. Hangout at the Gallows, an oblique climate anti-anthem, is reborn with lashings of Bad Seeds gravitas. “What’s your politics? What’s your religion?” Tillman cries in the chorus, as if maddened by the inanity of such questions. But in the throes of his mania, the spotlight is all his.
• At the Portsmouth Guildhall on 11 March. Then touring.
