Don’t feel too bad if you don’t already know who the lord of the hipsters is; he has only been performing under his current moniker since 2012. I actually first became a fan of his; one year ago when I traveled to El Paso to visit my best friend over spring break. His girlfriend introduced his music to me and I immediately respected her taste, as the first thing I noticed when I entered the living room was her stacks of records.
Josh Tillman adopted his current stage name after modest success in the 2000’s and a brief stint touring with Fleet Foxes. He is releasing his third album through Sub Pop on the 7th of April, and has been touring the world in promotion. He seems to have made it onto the mainstream with his recent performance on Saturday Night Live on March 4th.
Throughout his body of work, his lyrics are contradictory and explicit. In his song “When you’re smiling and astride me” he talks about kissing his brother in his dreams in a very Freudian self-aware way. He resonates with sentimentality, yet retains a sharp wit that snuffs himself similar to that of Woody Allen movies. He is the hero in his own story yet self-depreciating. It is obvious when he stands on stage that he has always wanted to be there.
I notice two versions of FJM, the stripped down acoustic version that he is as FJM and the produced studio version that is found on his albums. Most of his live performances are pretty minimalistic and feature little instrumentation, however, his studio recordings produced with Johnathan Wilson feature a fuller, richer sound. If and when you listen to his albums I suggest using a full hi-fi system to take advantage of the mastering, unless of course, you are cool enough to catch this man in the wild.
Here is an excerpt from a fantastic interview he did on KEXP published on YouTube May 18th 2012.
“I kind of defamed my own name, at some point, you know like, that was um, you know if I just picked up a guitar at age 29 and started writing songs I probably would have just gone by Josh Tillman or something. But I had loaded that name with all kinds of abstractions that I didn’t want to live with anymore. So, yeah, I like that a lot, I like that you can make records for ten years under your name and really not say anything meaningful about yourself. Like you’re, I was speaking to this person I wanted to be perceived as which is an alter ego, you know. And that’s kind of the innate mega gag for this whole thing is that its so if there the alter ego thing is such a red herring you know and you have to like in order to uh access like the music’s meaning you have to completely do away with the fact that a name means anything really. And uh, I just uh, I have a pretty morbid sense of humor and I like uh like, just the kind of patently ridiculous nature of the name” 14:00-15:02
He also recorded an intimate solo performance with Blogotheque last year in France that was recently released on YouTube. He performs all his hits and gives the audience a decent taste of his persona, it’s a fun little video to check out to catch you up with his music in anticipation for his third major release. He also has released a short film in conjunction with his new album Pure Comedy which sounds really great. Honestly, this is my most anticipated album of 2017, and I was really excited for the new XX album which turned out to be kind of a letdown, but I will write more on them later.
