In April, Father John Misty will follow up 2015’s excellent I Love You, Honeybear with a new album called Pure Comedy, Pitchfork reports today. The news follows the release of a video for the title track, which dropped yesterday.
Sub Pop announced the upcoming release with a 25-minute short film, featuring Josh Tillman in the studio looking as handsome and bearded as ever, interspersed with dreamlike shots of Los Angeles burning and pans of Pure Comedy‘s intricate cover art. There’s a song snippet at about five minutes in–probably “Ballad of the Dying Man,” judging by the track titles, which were also released today–that sounds especially promising.
The album was produced by Tillman himself and Jonathan Wilson, and features contributions from the composers Gavin Bryars, Nico Muhly, and Thomas Bartlett. Watch Pure Comedy: The Film below, and check out the tracklist and album art by New Yorker cartoonist Ed Steed via Pitchfork after that.
UPDATE: Tillman has also shared an essay about the album, and from the looks of it, he intends it as nothing less than a commentary on the history and the state of the human race itself, up to and including our current political quagmire. Read it below the tracklist.
