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**Father John Misty - God's Favorite Customer**
★★★★☆

Josh Tillman has never been one to shy away from the grand gesture, but on his fourth outing as Father John Misty, the arch-ironist of indie folk finds himself in surprisingly vulnerable territory. God's Favorite Customer arrives trailing whispers of marital strife, creative burnout, and the kind of pharmaceutical-assisted soul-searching that would make Hunter S. Thompson blush. It's an album born from chaos, yet paradoxically, it might be Tillman's most focused work to date.

The backstory reads like a cautionary tale of modern celebrity malaise. Following the exhausting promotional cycle for 2017's Pure Comedy, Tillman found himself holed up in various New York hotels, his marriage to photographer Emma Elizabeth Garr reportedly on the rocks, his relationship with sobriety equally precarious. These weren't the gilded cages of rock star excess, but rather sterile corporate suites where Tillman wrestled with his demons while room service trays accumulated like evidence of a life temporarily derailed.

From this wreckage emerges an album that strips away much of the orchestral bombast that characterized its predecessors. Where I Love You, Honeybear wallowed in lush romanticism and Pure Comedy delivered sermons from the mount, God's Favorite Customer opts for intimate confession. The arrangements, crafted alongside longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, favour space over spectacle, allowing Tillman's voice—always his greatest instrument—to carry the emotional weight.

The opening title track sets the tone with its deceptively gentle melody masking lyrics that oscillate between self-loathing and grandiose delusion. "I'm God's favorite customer," Tillman croons with characteristic smirk, but there's genuine pain beneath the pose. It's a masterclass in having your cake and eating it too—maintaining the Father John Misty persona while revealing the wounded Josh Tillman underneath.

"Mr. Tillman" serves as the album's comic centrepiece, a hotel-bound vignette that finds our protagonist fielding concerned calls from the front desk about his increasingly erratic behaviour. Over a shuffling rhythm that recalls classic Neil Young, Tillman catalogues his misadventures with the detached bemusement of someone watching their life implode in slow motion. It's simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, a perfect encapsulation of Tillman's ability to find profundity in the absurd.

The album's emotional core resides in "Please Don't Die," a surprisingly direct plea that abandons ironic distance for raw vulnerability. Backed by little more than piano and strings, Tillman confronts mortality—both his own and that of loved ones—with an honesty that would have been unthinkable on earlier releases. Similarly, "The Palace" unfolds as a meditation on isolation and connection, its lyrics painting vivid pictures of urban loneliness while the music builds to a cathartic crescendo.

"Disappointing Diamonds Are the Rarest of Them All" closes the album on a note of hard-won wisdom, its title alone worth the price of admission. Over a gentle acoustic strum, Tillman reflects on the gap between expectation and reality, finding beauty in the flawed and imperfect. It's a fitting conclusion to an album that finds profundity in personal failure.

Musically, God's Favorite Customer represents something of a return to the more song-focused approach of Tillman's breakthrough. The production, handled by Tillman, Wilson, and Trevor Spencer, favours warmth over precision, creating an atmosphere that feels lived-in rather than constructed. There are echoes of classic singer-songwriter fare—shades of Harry Nilsson's melancholy, Randy Newman's sardonic wit, and Leonard Cohen's existential probing—but filtered through Tillman's distinctly millennial anxiety.

Three years on, God's Favorite Customer has aged remarkably well, revealing new layers with each listen. In the context of Tillman's catalogue, it represents a crucial pivot point—the moment when the Father John Misty character evolved from satirical device to genuine artistic expression. The album's influence can be heard in a generation of indie artists who've learned to balance sincerity with irony, vulnerability with wit.

For all its talk of personal crisis, God's Favorite Customer emerges as Tillman's most emotionally generous work. It's an album that earns its darkness through genuine introspection, finding light not through false optimism but through the