It's the Vinyl Countdown: #2 "Mahashmashana" by Father John Misty
Counting down my five favorite records released in 2024
Take the flight.
Check your baggage. Remove all liquids and sharp objects. Shoes off, de-belt, and put your hands up in scattered reverence.
Take the flight.
Who is in the window seat? Who is in the aisle? When the oxygen mask drops from the ceiling, who will you put it on first?
You.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is.
This is the first time I have taken this flight.
Father John Misty Airlines.
Fly the Anthemic Skies.
Nuts in the galley. A warm towel to the face to settle the pores, prepping to accept the emotional swerve-itude I’m about to receive. The anticipatory contraction of my skin at the towel as it is tonged away.
The ascension is immediate.
I feel dizzy.
I feel as though we have angled too steeply and risen too quickly to a height I did not expect.
And it happened in a flash.
The second the chocks were away we launched straight into Song 1, “Mahashmashana” and this opening and title song tilts us hard at the sky, swerving to avoid bird strikes and those pesky, ground-borne laser pointers that seek to blinds us to our inevitable and glorious flight.
Settle in, passengers all. This is the cleanest of air and our flight path is set.
We are super high. You’ve got it. You’re in it. Altitude like this—where your heart is higher than your reality—is not for the meek. Are you ready?
Look out the starboard window. Look out the port. The pareidolia of clouds winks. In cahoots with the pilot.
We are soaring now. Floating. Gliding.
Trust the pilot. Trust the pilot.
Clouds are heavy. I read this today, somewhere, someplace. The pilot must know this. The pilot must have handbooks. Charts. Manifests. Sketches on a cocktail napkin, inks smudged by the icy tears of condensation. The pilot knows the way and how to get there.
Melt into this.
Our wings are touching at clouds now. Clipping. Displacing. Close your eyes. Enjoy the flight, drifting in and amongst the moist wisdom of clouds as we escape the weight of our earth-bound stresses. Stresses heavier than the 1.1 million pounds of that cumulus there. The one shaped like your debt.
Father John Misty’s “Mahashmashana” is a long-haul flight. The frequent flyer points are maximized, and many tracks are massive earners. I say that based on just how many times I’ve played this record. On how many miles I got from that first song alone.
That first song. You can get caught in a flight pattern repeat of it for quite some time. If you let yourself get caught in its vortex. If you let yourself go.
But I’m skipping ahead.
Cruising altitude. Attendants and seatbelts. Boarding pass as a bookmark as I make my notes about the twelve tracks. There is too much to say. Too much. I’m in no shape.
I could spend forever trying to pick apart these lyrics, but the music itself is the fuselage. The thing that holds this record together. The swell of strings, a gentle piano, the massage of flute, the tootling of a sax. The glissading down the soft snow of cloud-borne composition.
I feel free to mix my metaphors here. I feel free to interpret as I see fit.
May we be forever flying.
May we be forever in the open skies.
The pilot is present. The pilot has his wings. The pilot pushes his hat to cock-eyed and with hands on the yoke, controls our pitch, and roll, and yaw to set us on a direct line to the center of some universe that he is captain of. To a land no doubt rich with beard oil resources, philosophy books, and dictionaries.
The constant tick of miles as the contrails of Side 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 (for is a 2 LP record) are left behind us and we are removed from the mundane world below.
The swollen eyes of rivers. The dry and scared earth. We are crossing the wasteland of our lies. Lies that diminish us all. Lies that will take us to the next life where we will no doubt lie some more.
You don’t mean that, do you Radar? Surely, you don’t.
I don’t know. Not my record. Not my words. It’s all the pilot. All Josh Tillman.
Relax. Let the Ambien do its job. We are safe up here, in the body of this work. Under the control of this pilot. Safe to just reflect on this. To read too much into the lines of thought of the in-flight magazine.
Mahashmashana is, according to my intense and thorough research that took all of one minute, “an anglicization of mahāśmaśāna, the Sanskrit word for cremation ground.” Or more poetically, “the burning wasteland before the next life.” Who doesn’t love a burning wasteland? Who doesn’t love a next life?
Read into that what you will.
All I know is if that first song doesn’t get you to take the full flight—to buy the record—nothing will. But, again, I’m skipping ahead.
Flying can feel like a trap. To enjoy the experience, you must relinquish all sense of control over your own destiny, and you must do so willingly. You must be fine with sitting in total submission to the moment, to the conditions, to the will of the manifest. You must commit to the experience.
You must trust the pilot.
What is happening? Who is flying this plane? Do they have a license? Who you are and what planet are you from and WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME, JOSH TILLMAN?!
Autopilot is for amateurs. You must focus. You must pay attention. The flight plan is complex. Relax, I said. Relax.
Plug into the flow of a dozen songs as they fill your noise canceling headphones. Gaze out the window as you follow the path. Find the shapes of interpretation within the clouds—whatever you decide these songs mean is what you decide these songs mean. The pilot provides the instructions, found in the seat-back in front of you, but honestly—just look the pictures, you’ll get the gist.
You don’t need to read anything.
Stay alert.
Be alive.
Succumb to the sonic ministrations as the icicles of understanding gather at the edge of your vision. The blues and oranges and yellows and reds of the world below. Nothing up here with us but the flow of air and mood and life in the jet stream.
Pilot is dog.
Let’s take this flight!
Side 1, Track 1: “Mahashmashana.” I think you already know how I feel about this song. This song was the first song I heard off this record, and it made me order it instantly, without listening to another.
Take chances. Commit to music!
It is—here’s that word again—soaring. It is cinematic. It is anthemic. It is opening credits music. It is … 9 minutes and 19 seconds long. It doesn’t feel 9 minutes and 19 seconds long.
I’ll be honest (and this goes for the record overall) I didn’t look at lyrics until I’d played this record multiple times during bike rides and while walking around town. It’s the music that gets me. It’s the music that hooks you in. It got into my blood and plugged itself in and never disconnected. During that process, lines do jump out.
His body is the Gelson's
Her soul, the fallen star
Gelson’s is a supermarket chain in LA. Does that line mean his body is a supermarket? Are we objectifying this bloke? And the gal? Has she lost her soul to Hollywood? Has she given up? Is this the wasteland they must cross to get to the next life?
Is a scheme to enrich assholes
What the godhead had in mind
Everything is a lie, I guess. A ploy. A plot. I’m not sure what scheme our pilot is referring to with these assholes, but Zing! Nice one.
This is the refrain peppered throughout.
Mahashmashana, all is silent
And in thе next universal dawn
Won't have to do thе corpse dance, do the corpse dance
Do the corpse dance with these on
Well, thankfully we won’t have to put up with these fools and their lies or do this performative dance for much longer. Doing our dance with our lying faces on. The next life, baby, just around the corner. We already dead in this one. Or… something. *shrugs*. You do you. Meaning is oblique whenever you encounter lyrical philosophizers in pilot’s uniforms.
He spoke into a hot mic
He sang like a bird
He hadn't had a single drink yet
There's no mistaking what you heard
Whoops. Someone said the quiet part out loud. But that’s the thing about hot mics—I wish more people were on them. The truth of who they are comes out on a hot mic. It leads to these lines below. It’s obvious I love everything about this song and the imagery and sentiment is right up my aisle.
A perfect lie can live forever
The truth don't fare as well
And…
Like there’s no baby in the king cake
The ‘king cake’ line is my favorite. Luck is a lie. Bait and switch is the order of the day.
These are just a few lyrical highlights for me, but back to the compositional swell of this thing, and us being on the metaphorical plane I put us on at the beginning of this review.
The ending of this song—after the words have run out and the lie spools us away—takes us higher and higher along what feels like an impossible trajectory. We will run out of notes soon, surely?
Nope, the notes keep going up. We are going higher. We are going higher still. On and on until finally we gleam the cube of this earth’s atmosphere and are launched into orbital bliss. It hits a note I knew it was going to hit. My brain was yearning for it. We were always going there. To the blissness.
If this album were only this song, I’d be happy.
“Janeen. That’s called a single. There is a single of this. You can buy it and everything.”
Point taken. Get back in your seat. I think I’m drunk, and I quit drinking years ago. You do feel it more at altitude though, right?
Last errant thoughts: George Harrison and Ringo’s drum-laze precision in “Something.”
Side 1, Track 2: “She Cleans Up.” Nothing like a female revenge song. Compared to the feel of the previous track, this one has real some swagger in its storytelling. Some Hollywood bluster, which I think might be the point. Hollywood. Men trying to get away with shit.
Right out the gate, Mary of Magdalene is coming out swinging to ‘clean up’ the scene in a ‘get away from my boo’ kinda way. Would you have stepped in? Does stepping in change anything? Wait… just what is this song about?
I’m not familiar with the second reference of the alien film in Scotland, but I don’t think that is important. Women, ‘cleaning up’ and the many interpretations of cleaning up, that is the point. The winning connotation, like in a game. The wiping out your opponents in a fight. The ‘cleans up nice’ or cleaning up your act, or more literal, cleaning up after something distasteful.
I’m making a sad face emoji with my actual face at this bit. The “did she at least get the movie?” line put me there and I can never come back from it. The ‘you’ll never work in this town again’ is obviously a Hollywood reference and a lightbulb goes off at the mention of kimonos and that casting couch wink. Are we in Harvey Weinstein era? This song is…
The sad thread is woven throughout. Or the question, I guess. Does everything always just go back to normal? Why? Is it just a cycle?
Exposure, outrage, the turning on, the back to how it’s always been.
The misogynist's daughter made him rethink what he said
and
The aggrieved becomes aggressor and we do it all again
The Internet cycle churns on. You ever sit back and watch it all unwind over what seems like an ever-decreasing timeframe? The turn can be breathtaking.
This is one of those songs the feels fun until you read the lyrics. And then you realize. Dammit!
I can’t believe we are only two songs in. Warning you in advance—a few more before I ease off on the lyrical cherry pickings. But even then, it won’t be by much.
Side 2, Track 1: “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose.”
The first two lines made me laugh because it took me back to that moment in my life on the Metro North reverse commute in the early noughties listening to that very album on the train and drifting away to Van as the scenery flashed past. Lost in music. Just like this flight. Anyway…
She put on Astral Weeks
Said "I love Jazz", and winked at me
I’m really hoping the girl is dropping a mansplaining troll landmine.
“Astral Weeks is not jazz, lil’ lady.”
She says it with a wink, so I’m guessing she knows exactly what she’s doing.
Treating his acid trips with anxiety. Great line. Love the groove of this one, although it sounds like the kind of party or gathering that I would despise. I can see why you’d be tempted to turn to self-medicating to get through it. That said, I find no comedy to the idea of clown portraits talking to you. I don’t know if they’re actual portraits on the wall, or the people there are clowns, but either way.
Think about all the parties or work dos you’ve been to that you’ve been in ‘no shape’ to be at. Sometimes I find social situations and people’s conversations unbearable. The posturing of folks. The inane. The pointless. I usually just leave. Most of the time I don’t go in the first place.
Performance art, an elaborate con
Yeah, performative bullshit. Nailed. It. If I can give you one tip it’s this: You don’t have to stay at a party. You can leave whenever you want, and you don’t even need to be rude about it. I will add that, based on what is happening other than Josh here, it is inadvisable to drop acid to make it tolerable. Quite frankly, it sounds like it made things so much worse.
Josh Tillman’s and the Accidental Overdose.
We’re all overdosing on the clown portraits in this stupid world.
Side 2, Track 2: “Mental Health”
The strings swell and we’re back to dream amongst the clouds. The name Rufus Wainwright pops into my head. He sounds like Rufus Wainwright here. Does he? I think he does. On this song and the final one on the record. But I digress.
Recline. Open the shade if it’s not already. Gaze out the window and ready yourself. The flutes are about to get real flutey.
How many songs do you know that talk about mental health? Just throw the phrase around, willy nilly? Ah, to live in a when it can stand as the main refrain of a CHORUS—what a time to be alive.
Which I think is the point. But before we get to that, forget Rufus Wainwright this is the first song on the record where I feel like I’m watching Moulin Rouge. That is a very specific reference, and I don’t mean EXACTLY Moulin Rouge with Ewan McGregor having a little sing. I mean this could so easily be a song from a musical.
Walking wet streets, telling a story. Twirling around a lamppost. Gazing at the wares in a shop window. Doing a walk through a marketplace ala Notting Hill, seasons change scene. You weren’t expecting a Notting Hill reference? Me neither. Caught me off guard. Let’s get out of the market and back on the flight.
In the FJM musical, our character is admiring the chia pet in the SkyMall magazine while singing “men-tal-hel-elth, men-tan-hel-elth.” Now mansplain—or-personsplain—to me about how they don’t have SkyMall Magazine anymore. For the sake of my mental health, I will ignore your protests.
The song builds and builds and we’re yawing and dipping a wing to look over a body of water. Hold that note, dear reader.
Mental health, mental health
Maybe we're all far too well
Maybe we spend too much time with this self-care schtick? We are in ‘hold space for’ territory, which is fast becoming another phrase I blanch at. Whatever. The song builds-builds-builds and we are way up high in our spiritual jodhpurs once again.
Oh, magic child
This dream we're born inside
Feels awful real sometimes
But it's all in your mind
I don’t know. Should we just sit with it? Feel bad sometimes just to gain the experience? Should we expose ourselves to bad things? I just don’t know! Something I do know—I love this song. The “all in your mind” at the end. This is ripe some high school musical treatment.
Side 3, Track 1: “Screamland”
I was a bit ‘meh’ on this one. Initially. I had a hard time plugging in for some reason. But then the chorus won me over and it took me a while to figure out why.
When it hits the chorus, I am reminded of my long rides in 2021 listening to the LOW record “Hey What.” There are moments on that record where it nearly blows my eardrums out with the wall of sound sonics of it—just like this one does in the refrain.
When it hits it, it’s like the plane hits a pocket of turbulence and the cart is careening down the aisle and the seatbelt light has come on and it’s discombobulated and confusing and settled and unsettled at the same time with the juxtaposition of those gentle verses and the chorus and the more I play this song, the more I get into it.
It's both lovely and disturbing. Sonically weird.
The slide up of that cello in that first verse is delicious.
Optimists are infuriating people who, even when their aircraft drops 5,000 ft in 1 second still think everything will be alright. Just grip the armrest, pull the seatbelt tight, and trust the pilot. No matter the static. No matter the unnecessary roughness.
Stay young
Get numb
Keep dreaming
Screamland
Dreamland/Screamland. I’m onboard. Optimists. We must live in dreamland. Sometimes it’s the only way we can get through each day.
Rings up to the knuckles, sutures in the bath
Here lie the born losers, God won't take them back
I don’t know what this means—and I’m not going to attempt to guess—but it’s uncomfortable in its beauty.
Like the song.
Side 3, Track 2: “Being You”
Speaking of movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone? For me, the start of this one has the same vibe as Beck’s cover of “Everybody gotta learn sometime” in that film. A kind of melancholic lushness.
I’m surprised that’s it’s taken six songs for the word LUSH to pop into my mind and stick. The arrangements in this song are rich and… lush. Where’s my thesaurus? I’m sure Josh Tillman has one I can borrow.
What is it like to being you? Is he asking about being normal? What is it like to not be so exhausted from playing this role every day? Wearing the mask. The one that hides the real you. What is it like to be listening and interested rather than playing at it?
Confession: it’s my least favorite song on the record, but it’s hard to tell if I find it to be the weak link because it is a weak link or that it’s just impossible for every song to live up to the majesty of the first track.
That said:
Just a spitting image
Of someone that I knew
Just a perfect parody
I can barely do
Woof.
Side 4, Track 1: “I Guess Time Makes Fools of us all”
Now we’re talking. Here’s your First Class upgrade and a side of truth to go with your optimism. This one’s a rambling, honky-tonk-disco of a line-dancing story told well. Folk disco funk. Is that a genre? There’s the shadowy, sly philosophy of it. Sprawling lyrics that say so much as so little. I could spend forever on it, but I’m leaving that as your homework.
The great-ish minds of my generation
Yes. Nice play on that reference.
The groom is a liar
And the bride is a shill
The priest says, "If these two don't make it
Who among us ever will?"
Ok. Go listen. Pick it apart. But above all, just enjoy it. Time DOES make fools of us all, and I sense I’m running out of it with this ramble.
Last up is Side 4, Track 2: “Summer’s Gone.” Let’s get ready to land. Tray tables up. Seats in the upright position. Clean your zone and wipe the delicious crumbs of this wonderful sky feast from your well-stained bib.
We are coming in to land and this is a song made for landings if ever there was. It has the feel of closing time, where the restaurant is empty, the plates are being cleared away, and someone is sweeping the floor. Again, he’s challenging Rufus Wainwright. It’s a simple closer. Let’s close.
We land, gliding gracefully to the tarmac with a sign of satisfied relief. Thank you for flying with Father John Misty Airlines. There are many choices you can make. Choose this one and rack up the miles.
Take the flight.
Extra Credit
Turns out LOW’s guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, plays guitar on Mahashmashana’s “Screamland” (that track that I said reminded me of the album “Hey what”) I am surprised that I made that connection. I’m usually not that switched on. I found this video that attempts to recreate his guitar sound. Yep. That’s it. That’s the wall of sound I remember from that record.
FINAL It’s the Vinyl Countdown List
In case you missed any, catch up on your reading and listening.
#5: “Confidenza” soundtrack by Thom Yorke
#4: “Romance” by Fontaines D.C.
#3: “A Dream is All We Know” by The Lemon Twigs
#2: “Mahashmashana” by Father John Misty
#1: TIE “Wall of Eyes” by The Smile and “TANGK” by IDLES