Crippled by depression and losing interest in his own music, Josh Tillman did what many writers before have done – he hit the road.
“I got into my van with enough mushrooms to choke a horse and started driving down the coast with nowhere to go,” he says.
“I was really sick of what I had been doing musically for most of my 20s and I had no motivation to do it.
“I was struck during a strange moment at like 3:30 in the morning that I just needed to leave. I couldn’t walk around feeling like this all the time.”
During the time off the former Fleet Foxes drummer, who has been releasing solo albums since 2003, adopted a new moniker – Father John Misty – and found salvation when he started writing a novel.
Tapping into his “narrative voice”, he wrote and recorded Fear Fun, released in May this year. A vibrant, often hilarious album, he is touring and will be in Australia for Splendour in the Grass and sideshows.
The album comes packaged with two poster-sized sheets featuring lyrics and a 31-chapter treatment for a fictional video game called ‘‘’Bed Bug Mountain’’.
He says “finding my voice” was one of the revelations of his career. “The novel is just so fun to write,” he says.
“I realised I had this whole skill set that I’d been too vain to use before because I didn’t trust my own impulses.
“Once I stopped caring about whether or not my sense of humour made its way into the songs, I realised not only that they were funny but they were also more useful or profound than anything I’d written before.”
The album has been well received by critics, and lead single “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”, which features actress Aubrey Plaza, battered and bruised, stumbling through a party, attracted attention.
Tillman says the pair share a similar sense of humour. “We’re both crazy busy. I met her at a party a few years ago,” he says. “I felt she would be perfect in this cathartic role. She’s basically playing me in the video.”
As for his songwriting, which has been influenced by Loudon Wainwright III, Harry Nilsson and Oscar Wilde, he says he wanted to inject personality in his lyrics.
“I don’t like wound-licking music. I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it,” he says.
“Singer-songwriters are meant to be confessional or whatever, with a lot of language about loss and so on.
“I see that as sort of funny, these stupid 20-year-old kids just wildly romanticising their own everyday experiences … how much of your life mirrors your music?
“Everyone seems to want to downplay the humanity or there is this real ‘aww shucks’ sense of propriety around performance.
“A lot of new music doesn’t grab me. What grabs me is interesting, vivid details or a sense of humour. The songwriters I’m into are people you want to hang out with, they have personality.”
Father John Misty plays at The Corner on July 28. Fear Fun out now.