"If Pure Comedy was available in Christian bookstores, Christians would f***ing love me."

When Josh Tillman says this of his latest Father John Misty anthology, he's being 100 per centum sincere. Granted, it's a surprising have, given the album's irreverent, cheeky and sometimes profane approach to asking difficult questions almost organized religion and faith. But Tillman is pretty sure Pure Comedy—the 13-song folk opus beloved by critics and his fiercely devoted fans alike—would notice a real audience among the LifeWay set, if they ever gave information technology a chance.

"When I was making it and people were request me what the deal was with my new album, I was like, 'I think I made a gospel record," he says. "I thought, I'one thousand not sure anyone but Christians will be able to appreciate it … They'd get, 'Thank God someone is asking these questions. Thank God someone is taking all of this to task.' Y'all know?"

Simple misunderstandings

Tillman'southward home is at the end of a winding, tree-lined street in the Hollywood Hil ls. Looking effectually the placidity bungalow, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to see why he might exist misunderstood by so many people. A record collection dominates the living room, merely he doesn't really listen to music. The art is eclectic and ironic. Bookcases are stuffed full of everything from eastern spirituality to the Bible. Even his name trips people upward.

Tillman released a number of solo albums as J. Tillman over the first 10 years of his career. But since 2012, he has performed as Father John Misty, a proper name he calls "categorically silly … it makes me laugh every time I say information technology."

Comedy is a large function of Father John Misty'southward whole affair. His vocal lyrics are frequently funny; so funny you can miss their profundity. Information technology'due south a lilliputian contradiction in a persona full of them.

His music tin can be melancholy, but his live shows are total-out rock concerts. He's known for making intellectual art, but regularly makes the roundson social media sarcastically trolling Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Ryan Adams.

If every single tic in Tillman's personality doesn't add upwards, well, it's just because he's non a man overly concerned with anything as asinine or soul-sucking as a coherent brand message. In real life, he's thoughtful and animated. He's a bookworm. He's sly, too. You regularly get the sense he'due south in on a joke that simply he knows.

He has a lot to say, but as with a lot of musicians who endeavour to tackle anything more complex than a broken heart, people misinterpret his message, or at least, his intent.

Those trying to nail down Pure Comedy are bound to get frustrated, because Tillman is non interested in things that tin can exist hands nailed downwardly. He likes to ask questions with no easy answers. Simply those questions, he insists, "however have value."

Such an Intimate Thing

"Being someone who cannot get Christianity out of my system—I no longer even actually want to—information technology's an intimate thing to question God," Tillman says.

There's a song on Pure One-act called "When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay." In the song, Jesus returns to earth, where he'south confronted by an angry, dislocated Josh Tillman looking at the state of things, singing, Jesus, you didn't leave a whole lot for me / If this isn't hell already, and so tell me what the hell is?

It's as expert a moving-picture show every bit whatever of the sorts of questions Tillman asks.

"It'southward similar, 'Yeah, OK, if when Christ comes back, y'all guys all want to be doing the same thing, I take some questions,'" he explains. "This is intimate.If this is truly my maker, and I take an audience with this guy in the mode that Christianity claims I do, am I limited to a certain conversation? Are at that place talking points I have to run through or can I have an intimate conversation with my God?"

It's a fair question, and the notion of having an intimate conversation with God is a recurring theme on Pure One-act. Just when you lot're an acclaimed artist who's headlined international tours, intimate conversations have a way of becoming public.

"For all intents and purposes, I am a Christian, in that you cannot actually get information technology out of your system," he says. "Information technology becomes your worldview … I had this realization that even if y'all become a fanatical anti-Christian, you lot're still living in the orbit of these principles. It's still a part of you."

And then Tillman notwithstanding feels of the Christian culture, fifty-fifty if he'south not exactly in information technology. But for every bit much as he's deeply familiar with the contours of Christianity equally it's most commonly expressed in the United States, he's even more deeply troubled past it.

Complicated Roots

"I'll do these little press videos where they're like, 'So tell us about your outset concert,'" Tillman says recounting the rounds of interviews for outlets similar Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine and MTV he's done following an album release. "And I'one thousand like, 'I approximate that would have been DC Talk. Y'all want to hear near DC Talk?"

If this bit of Tillman's backstory is not widely known, it's only considering he hasn't always foun

d it easy to talk most his upbringing in the Church or the years he spent immersed in Christian sub-civilisation.

"I had this whole music career—or something resembling a career—in my 20s, and I did interviews," he says, referencing his days every bit a solo artist and the drummer for the indie-folk band Fleet Foxes. "I didn't go anywhere almost Christianity, permit alone referencing information technology so directly in my music."

"I was terrified that someone was going to find out that I was a Christian," he continues. "That I had grown upwards that style, that information technology was role of my life."

He grew upwardly in a devout family that attended church building faithfully. Early, he says his church leaders pegged him for a bit of a troublemaker, and that wasn't necessarily seen as a bad affair.

"Rebels and freethinkers and the guys who were in trouble and stuff, they're the ones who go on to be pastors," he explains. "That'southward the mold for the future pastor and something that I was sort of, in minor ways, being groomed for."

He delivered his offset sermon at the age of 6. All through high schoolhouse, he remained involved in ministry, fifty-fifty though the older he got, the more church building culture—especially the attitude of some leaders—began to rub him the incorrect way.

"On ane hand, a lot of it but has to do with a culture of the individual, with like the cult of the self, and then these people who kind of refuse to integrate become leaders of this matter," he says, remembering seeing other young Christians who were developing into ministry personalities. "I ever found that very disconcerting, and I saw it when I went to Christian college. I saw it in full force. These kids who were on their manner to becoming pastors and stuff. I constitute them very disturbing socially."

To those raised in the Church building, this may audio familiar. It'due south true—a lot of the people who go groomed for church building leadership are the aforementioned ones who commencement feeling a trivial unsettled well-nigh the whole affair. In that location can, at times, be a sense that you're being drafted into a sport yous're not sure you want to play.

Sometimes, that tin can lead to an explosive split up with the faith, in which you get out your religious tradition in a blaze of celebrity. That's not Tillman's story though. His is something more gradual and complex.

After attention Christian university Nyack College for a year, grappling with his organized religion and flirting with atheism, he moved to Seattle to attempt to get a music career going. It was there that he ended up moving into the basement of famed Christian music producer and Poor Old Lu band member Aaron Sprinkle, a man whose proper name would eventually become nearly synonymous with the Christian indie-rock label Tooth and Nail Records. Tillman even wrote band bios for the label to make a little extra greenbacks.

He still has a fondness for the Christian bands he grew upwardly listening to (Starflyer 59 is a personal favorite of his). "I was lucky t

o abound up in the kind of gilded age of Christian rock," he says. "It was astonishing."

Tillman recounts a story of beingness 20 years one-time and befriending Jesse Sprinkle—Aaron'south brother—a musician who was, at the time, playing drums for the Christian hardcore outfit Demon Hunter. Sprinkle got sick before the ring's outset session, and they needed someone to take his place. Tillman ended upwardly filling in. "I'm sitting there, and they're like 'Practise you desire to play drums on this?'" he remembers. "And I was like, 'Yeah, of course!' Then now I have credits on that first Demon Hunter record … I love that that is one of my main credits."

Only while the Christian hardcore scene was fun, Tillman was struggling with other, more noun parts of the civilization he'd been raised in. After striking out to Seattle to pursue music, he wrestled not only with questions, just with how Christians tended to respond to his questions.

"The sick matter—and I use that word lightly—is that yous grow up, and they tell y'all what to believe, and and so, they have now integrated that moment into the program where they go, 'Hey, past the way, your faith needs to exist your own, and it can't only be this thing that you've been told to believe your whole life,'" he says, sounding genuinely frustrated.

"So you simply become, 'What the f***? Yous just pulled out the rug from under me! I've done everything you lot told me to do. I have non questioned this. I have believed it because it is the immutable catholic truth of the universe apparently, because I take never been around anyone who did not claim that this was the truth. And now you're telling me that all this time I've merely been paying lip service to this affair, and now I need to observe my own reason for …" he pauses.

And in that break is the frustration of anyone who's ever been disappointed when their spiritual leaders—who once seemed so easy and confident in their theological intellect—slowly reveal themselves to non be the all-knowing founts of wisdom yous'd been led to believe.

"It'due south a head f***," says Tillman, finally. "Information technology really is."

Father John Misty Is Built-in

2012 changed everything for Tillman.

He had spent years edifice a solo career every bit J. Tillman before joining Armada Foxes in 2008. When that union concluded in a public and contentious manner, it could have been the end of Tillman'due south music career.

But in 2012, he had a transformative experience in his professional—and spiritual—journey. "I took psychedelics for the first time," he says. "That was a defining moment for me. I call up in a lot of means it was far more memorable than receiving Christ in my heart."

The moment opened Tillman's thinking, to put it mildly, and gave rise to an epiphany: He would make music with a mission.

"I made a determination five years ago that I wanted my music to be useful, and I wanted to be in service to people," he explains. "And in order to practice that, I was going to have to beginning communicating a lot more directly. My music couldn't just be this aesthetic exercise."

And in that moment, Father John Misty was born.

It's worth clearing some things up about the name Father John Misty. Yes, it represents a transition in Tillman's songwriting philosophy, but it'south not a different persona. Call back, Tillman chose the name by and large because he thought it was funny.

"I never liked the name Joshua, and I got tired of 'J.' It doesn't matter what you lot call yourself," he explains. "It was seriously born in a moment of, 'You could call yourself Father John Misty,' truly the silliest thing I could think of in a moment."

But the adoption of the name represented a pregnant moment. It was a moment in which Tillman decided Male parent John Misty would aid other people'due south eyes be opened to the hypocrisies of the earth and the truth behind the questions that had plagued him all his life.

The effect was Fear Fun. Dissimilar his previous, J. Tillman-era albums, the debut Father John Misty release was a funny, high-energy anarchism that tackled large ideas between punchlines. Information technology was an album about spiritual wandering, looking for truth while driving down the declension in a van filled with books and shrooms.

The tape was a disquisitional favorite and commercial success, and was followed up by 2015's I Honey You, Honeybear, a meditation on Tillman's real life as a new husband, discovering the trappings, burdens and benefits of dear and domesticated mod life. Information technology's a darker anthology than Fright Fun, taking aim at the American Dream with lines like, Oh, they gave me a useless instruction / And a subprime loan / On a craftsman home / Keep my prescriptions filled … Save me, President Jesus.

Back when Tillman was just releasing solo albums as J. Tillman, he would send his parents copies of each album he recorded. He went back to his family's home 1 vacation and noticed his parent'southward collection of CDs. He shuffled through them, finding his own yet wrapped in cellophane, "untouched."

"How can you non even be curious?" he says. "For a musician, that'south a pretty serious betrayal."

He says his parents were disinterested in his art considering they run across it as "secular or kind of antagonistic to their worldview." And his parents aren't alone in that cess of Tillman's music, even as he evolved into Father John Misty, and particularly when it comes to his latest anthology.

"I would requite anything for people to see Pure Comedy the fashion that I intended or hoped people to see it," he says. "Information technology'southward incredibly difficult."

Pure Comedy is a sprawling, conceptual epic that starts at the birth of mankind and continues through mankind'south self-destruction at the easily of the engineering, organized religion and the entertainment industrial complex. With something that unwieldy, information technology'southward no wonder that not everyone's on the aforementioned page most it.

Have the concluding lines of the title runway. After unpacking all of the evils humans take unleashed upon itself in the search for meaning and security, Tillman sings, The only matter that seems to make them experience alive is the struggle to survive / But the only thing that they asking is something to numb the pain with / Until in that location's nothing human left / Just random matter suspended in the dark / I hate to say information technology, but each other'due south all we got.

That may seem similar a gloomy announcement that veers into humanism if not outright nihilism, merely, as Tillman explains information technology, "each other's all we got" is actually nearly finding God, not abandoning Him: "I think what Christ was really about was that—nosotros experience Him through other people."

"When I say [in the vocal], 'They worship themselves and nevertheless they're totally obsessed' Information technology's like what is the point of Christ? What is the betoken of Jesus?" he says. "What is the point of all of this window dressing if you just worship yourself?"

"Information technology becomes this empty f***ing practice if y'all alive in worship of yourselves," he explains. "That'southward the one-act of it.

"When I look at the person of Jesus, this guy who walked around speaking almost exclusively in ironies, the best parts of what Jesus had to say were ironic," he says. "That the kickoff shall be last and the last shall be first. When I am writing a song like 'Pure One-act,' I'm thinking well-nigh the fact you take this guy that was despised by the religious order of his day and who was there to take the world … Everybody is going, 'These institutions don't piece of work.' It'south got to exist personal."

Pure Comedy was written before the 2016 ballot, only still, the record feels politically timely. It takes on broken political institutions, especially in light of the teachings of Christ. "Running countries was not part of the deal," he says of Christianity. "And there is so much more power in absolving oneself of ability. That is the Gospel. That is the Beatitudes. Like, 'Powerful are the people who have no power.' If you absolve yourself of that, and so that, to me, is religion."

And by that reckoning, he says, Pure Comedy may take just as many "Christian" merits as a "Christian" album.

"Those kind of fundamental questions are plenty for a lifetime, I recollect," he says. "Show me a more than sophisticated question. And once more that is the pure comedy of the album. The answers haven't become more sophisticated. That'south an illusion. The questions are the aforementioned as they've always been."

Even so Request

After spending the afternoon at his dwelling house, Tillman heads to the studio where he's already wrapping up Pure Comedy'southward follow-up, due out adjacent year. He says he views the first three Father John Misty albums as a sort of informal trilogy, but at that place'south likely at least ane theme that will carry through to the next i: lyrics that ask questions.

Though he's evolved in his ain religion journey, Tillman says he withal isn't exactly sure what it means to truly experience Jesus. But he really wants to know. He grew up in the Church, simply that supernatural feeling that takes Christianity from an intellectual pursuit, a moral challenge and a social force for alter into a life-altering, existent experience, remains elusive.

He recalls a chat he once had with his father—a man who was saved as a middle-schooler and has been a devout Christian always since. He started asking his dad about people of other religions who are just every bit self-assured in their beliefs as any faithful Christian. "I'm just like, so everybody got information technology incorrect before you?"

Tillman asked most biblical genealogies that don't line upwards with other historical records, and parts within the biblical narrative that seem to contradict each other, no matter how nimble your hermeneutical acrobatics.

His father's response was, in essence, to inquire, "So what?"

"I similar that my dad'south answer is that he doesn't know and that he doesn't intendance," Tillman says. "I like that. Because that I tin can understand. Considering that's actually the only reasonable response."

Rather than relying on apologetics or Ray Comfort-style logic-based evangelism, the faith of Tillman'southward father is based on an encounter he had with Jesus.

"When yous look at all of it, the just response that I respect is that Christ did something in my life and it means something to me," he says. "That's the simply answer that I can actually respect. Everything else to me is f***ing Kirk Cameron bulls***. It'due south all just the wisdom of man, and man's wisdom is bulls***."

Possibly that's why Tillman can't stop asking questions. He's not exactly looking for answers, and he's certainly non looking for the wisdom of human. Through his art—and fifty-fifty drugs—he'due south simply looking for an see, and will keep questioning God until he gets i that adds upwardly to the experience he was promised when he was younger.

At the end of the solar day, Tillman doesn't have an issue with Christianity, or fifty-fifty an event with God. He notwithstanding hasn't experienced the encounter others take or that he's looking for, but he does believe it's real.

"Christ just never did anything in my life," he says. "It only didn't piece of work that way. I only hateful that in the very remedial sense. I said the words and I didn't feel annihilation."

His issue—the reason he is at present making music—is that he wants to bear witness others the dangers of getting it incorrect. He's holding true to the thought he had back in 2012 when he tried mushrooms and decided to serve and be useful.

Tillman tells the story of working at a friend's family business installing audio-visual paneling. His friend'south male parent ran the business and was a devout Jehovah's Witness, but the son was existence exiled from the religion. They worked together, simply that was the extent of their relationship.

"He worked with his dad, day in and day out," he recounts. "They never saw each other outside of work. They barely spoke at work … He never went home. They never spoke. That, to me, is a derangement of the natural order of things."

Anyone who's spent whatsoever amount of fourth dimension around a community of any religious persuasion has probably heard a similar story, or fifty-fifty been part of that story themselves. It'southward what happens when organized religion gets twisted.

It'due south something Tillman has seen firsthand and, according to him, it's the sort of religion that needs to exist questioned. Possibly Tillman, by standing just outside of the thing, is in a ameliorate place to question it than most.

"I retrieve the reason a lot of musicians have problem staying with the Church building is because music is all nigh harmony, literally and figuratively" he says. "Information technology's about looking for these harmonic strains that run through the human feel and these points where everything converges. And I call up Christianity, at least for me, demanded that I expect at what I saw as beingness inconsistencies and just live with them. But I love duality. Duality is at the heart of music. It's at the heart of my life."

And if dualism may seem to pb to some intellectual contradiction, Tillman says, well, what is religion if non learning to embrace paradox?

"Isn't that function of the deal?" he says. "Isn't that role of humility? Isn't part of Christianity being able to ask, 'How could I perhaps expect the world to empathise me?' That'south the humming dynamo at the center of Christianity to me."

"But now we're living in this world where in gild for this stuff to be true information technology all has to exist factual. You lot have to be able to wait at the h2o levels of the Chiliad Canyon and nautical chart out where the alluvion of Gilgamesh happened and all this stuff. And I'm thinking, 'OK, where'due south the faith? What role does organized religion take in this?"

All music

"I think you're going to exist difficult pressed to find whatever musician who doesn't take some vested interest in spirituality and matters of the heart," Tillman says. "I just come across those as beingness like part and parcel with Christ or whatever. Information technology is all most sin and redemption. All music."

And so this is what it comes downwardly to for Tillman. He'south asking big questions, just he's not trying to be antagonistic. He'southward not exactly in the Christian civilization, but he is of it, and he wants to broaden its scope—to forcefulness information technology to face the sort of issues he never felt like he got permission to grapple with when he was younger. He's looking to widen the tent.

"If the Church building says, 'OK, perchance these things that are happening out in the broader world—maybe Christ is in that too,' and then maybe the world's marketplace tin can be our market," Tillman says.

And if Tillman can become the Church building interested in the sorts of questions he thinks information technology should exist asking and so, who knows, maybe they'll commencement selling his album in Christian bookstores.