FATHER JOHN MISTY with HAR MAR SUPERSTAR at the Horseshoe Tavern, Monday, May 14. Rating: NNNN
I heard Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings, the grungy hit off of Joshua Tillman (formerly known as J. Tillman)’s recent debut as Father John Misty, Fear Fun, blasting out of a car window on Spadina on my way to the show.
It’s a credit to the former Fleet Foxes drummer that the show was hardly just about waiting for that song – which he saved for near the end of the night.
On the contrary, Tillman pleasantly surprised by swaggering onto the stage sans instrument along with a five-piece back up band and launching into countryish I’m Writing A Novel before moving through most of the album, swaying his hips and singing his guts out the whole time while the guys behind and beside him held down a sweet groove and sang backup vocals.
Tillman’s an unusual showman – he bantered about banter, declined a beer, kissed his young guitar player, called the show market research for subsequent touring, and had no qualms about giving the finger to hecklers. He also broke his mic stand and demoed classic mic stand moves.
It sounds out of control, but it was actually smooth and highly entertaining. In one particularly genius moment, he got the crowd quiet by talking about homoeroticism before launching into Only Son Of A Ladies Man.
There wasn’t really an encore, which was a bit of a disappointment, but Tillman and Co. as Father John Misty had delivered a tight and memorable set, even if, as Tillman confessed at the end, he’d been very stoned the whole time.
Opener Har Mar Superstar (aka Sean Tillmann, no relation) was entertaining in an entirely different way. With Tillman in his backup band on drums, he sang, danced and stripped along to partly pre-recorded, partly live songs about ladies and sex sort of a sweaty Los Angeles soul pop equivalent to Ontario’s B.A. Johnston.
