BELLAV322
Release date: 30 April 2021
"If you're going to quit your day job as drummer in the world's premier folk-rock band, you'd better have something special up your sleeve. Fortunately for J Tillman, what he left Fleet Foxes to do turns out to be as panoramic as that band is parochial. Fear Fun is the kind of album that can name-check Sartre, Heidegger and Neil Young in the same song. It is a thing of madcap, mushroom-inspired Laurel Canyon genius, all done with a 1970s soft-rock smile." - Simmy Richman, The Independant
"Perhaps freed by the new pseudonym or emboldened by his nearly four-year tenure as a Fleet Fox, Tillman varies things up on Fear Fun, reveals an adventurous palette, and makes what may be his best album to date. He's finally shaken that lonesome, somber tone, and these songs sound all the better for it: gregarious, engaging, even funny." - Pitchfork
"Casting himself as Father John Misty, a Laurel Canyon transplant equally repelled and fascinated by the self-centred sprawl of LA, his ‘Fear Fun’ is a country-leaning, wise-cracking masterwork. A droll riposte to those who think post-millennial folk music is po-faced, check out the urban hillbilly hustle of ‘Writing A Novel’ for lyrics loaded with offhand wit. ‘Only Son Of The Ladiesman’ sees undulating melodies circle around beautiful, balls-out harmonies and in ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings’ – a track far darker and more brusquely electric than anything else here – he’s also got a serious contender for song of the year." - NME