There was a time when it was widely hated, London’s Barbican, with its exposed concrete facades and labyrinthine, winding, brown-tiled footpaths that force people to follow the whims of the cynical architect up and down the stairs to the wantonly hidden entrance of the underground concert hall . Nowadays, however, the brutalist anti-charm of the building complex is met with a kind of perverse indulgence.
Somewhere in this intro there is perhaps an allegory of the star who fills the great hall of the Barbican Center that night, accompanied by the approximately 40-strong Britten Sinfonia, who take the stage first, and an eight-piece band. In the background, a velvet curtain that changes deep tones depending on the lighting, and six large, round spotlights on chrome stands, just like a hundred years ago.
The orchestra wears black, the band all sorts of colors, including suits made of sienna velvet and white gabardine. It’s a little disappointing when Mr Tillman himself finally saunters onto the stage in an unglamorous outfit of dark grey, tight-hemmed trousers, a white T-shirt, an overly short 10’s jacket, red socks and black knickers – the full beard neatly trimmed, the hair almost stubbly short. From our seat on the second balcony you can see the beginning of a bald patch on the back of his head, which may have prompted him to take this step. With all the other effort involved in this one-time performance, couldn’t he have put in a little more effort? A thought that will not come up for the last time this evening. On the other hand, the arrogant facade is of course part of that exaggerated persona of Father John Misty, behind which Josh Tillman hides his vulnerabilities. And this act is no lazy one, because it only works in combination with an unassailably flawless performance. In the next two hours, neither Tillman nor his band nor the Jules Buckley-led ensemble will afford a single noticeably wrong note. The last-named beau in black with a dark beard and gillet, although he turns his back on the audience, competes with the rather static main actor over long stretches simply by the rhythmic swinging of his tight buttocks.
Right from the opening song “Funtimes in Babylon” there is a clear separation between the band and the orchestra, reinforced by Plexiglas panes. The two ensembles play in perfect synchrony, more in parallel than with each other. Once Tillman calls out “The Britten Sinfonia!” and points in their direction, but on the whole he treats it like a lively orchestral track (which, in its decadence, has something to do with it). The notoriously dry acoustics of the Barbican contribute to this impression, the sound of the strings reaches the hall only diluted in its amplified imitation. The horns prevailed better, for example “Chateau No. 4″ give a whimsical touch of mariachi. The relaxed atmosphere seems to be transferred to Tillman. “I had my fly open for the first two or three songs,” he confides in us. Slowly he begins to come out of himself and to use the freedom to sing mostly without a guitar around his neck for short walks to the edges of the spotlight cone. He delivers characteristically hyper-sarcastic announcements about some of the new songs. “Q4”, for example, is the story of an author who “cannibalizes” the suffering of her seriously ill sister as material for her novel. The song is inspired by those incredibly sad posters that you can always see on the streets of Los Angeles, and the one touted descriptions of human misery as “deeply witty.” In the live performance of the number it becomes clear how close this supposed cynicism touches on the intimately confessional: “This ironic distance kept her sane / While her vessel sailed away / It was all very literary.”
And the people that Father John Misty sings to understand that perfectly. In the world of (social) media he is considered a problematic figure with latent misogyny suspicions, but his audience here, almost all people between 25 and 40, most of them presumably in “creative” professions, women, men or non-binary , obviously enjoys the provocative ambivalences of his texts. “Yeah!” a woman from behind exclaims in ecstasy as he sings his line from “Pure Comedy” about “sacred texts written by woman-hating epileptics.” The new songs definitely keep up, especially “The Next 20th Century”, played as the penultimate song, with its Randy Newmanesque perspective of the not only unreliable, but deliberately unbearable narrator. “Recite your history of oppression, babe/While you are under me,” Tillman sings, and then, straight into the whites of the Barbican clientele’s eyes: “I see ya / You student debtors.”
The gathered tuition debtors also see him and love him back. “I Love You, Honeybear” has the whole hall standing, and the fatalistic trio of the encore (“Nancy From Now On”, “Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution”, “Holy Shit”) makes Londons chic young intelligentsia finally the rest. Even one of the trombonists at the back slaps his head with joy.
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