Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Father John Misty, aka Joshua Tillman, rarely needs an excuse to loosen up, but Mahashmashana finds the rogue cleric in particularly extravagant form. Lyrics take aim at big themes, shooting from the hip for the stars. Lines spill restlessly into each other, sung by Tillman with a prolix relish for enjambement and also teasing pauses as he keeps us waiting for the next apercu. Orchestrations and arrangements build up giddily, affording grand views but teetering at the precipice.The high-wire act is risky, one person’s extravagance being another person’s profligacy, but the US singer-songwriter excels at it: he has hardly put a foot wrong since adopting the guise of Father John Misty in 2012. Prior to that, he performed furrow-browed folk-rock under the name J Tillman. Misty emerged after Tillman underwent a drastic reappraisal during a trip to the Californian coast with a bag of magic mushrooms. He duly found himself naked in a tree cogitating the musical doldrums he felt himself to be in. The solution was to amplify aspects of his personality to the max: hence the invention of Father John Misty.Mahashmashana is his sixth studio album as Misty. Named after a Sanskrit word for a cremation ground, it follows 2022’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century in which Tillman turned on the charm with sweetly orchestrated romantic drolleries. The orchestrations continue on his new album’s title track, but this time all the switches have been flicked on. The song is an orchestral rock epic that spends over nine minutes constructing an immense wave of sound. Tillman makes his way like a ship through the tumult, singing of birth, death and religion with his usual melodic rise and fall phrasings. Both singer and listener are almost overwhelmed.“She Cleans Up” is a jittery blast featuring blaring guitars, wired vocals and hepcat verses, like a brash modern version of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. A clever storyteller, Tillman’s lyrics are more cryptic than usual, another Dylanesque touch. “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All” takes a left turn into disco and funk, a strutting soundtrack for a wittily defeated one-liner: “I followed my dreams/And my dreams said to crawl.” The sudden ending to “Screamland”, cut off in full flow as though by a power cut, is annoyingly zany, but elsewhere the album’s anything-goes approach is intoxicating.★★★★☆‘Mahashmashana’ is released by Bella Union
