Lavishly orchestrated, marrying the ironic and the romantic, filled with stories and profound lines, Josh Tillman’s theatrical fifth LP is perhaps his finest yet, a fusion of the cinematic, jazz, swing, country, and folk-pop. There are strong comparative elements with the early 70s work of Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson in his tone, with also some echoes of the music film of John Barry. Standouts include the harpsichord-decorated Q4, a previous Song of the Day, the rather tragic but beautiful song about a dead cat, Goodbye Mr Blue, which has a country flavour of classic Kris Kristofferson, the vaudeville jazz swing of Funny Girl, the opener Chloë, and the closing track which completes the picture with multi-fold images and dark humour, The Next 20th Century. In an amusing twist, on a luxury edition of the record, there are two bonus 7-inch singles, cover versions of two of the songs, Lana Del Rey doing Buddy's Rendezvous and Jack Cruz doing Kiss Me (I Loved You), Cruz, mischievously being singing monkey voiced by director David Lynch, originally appearing in Lynch's short film What Did Jack Do?, with Tillman making the jokey pretence that Cruz is one of his most looked-up-to singers. Out on Sub Pop and Bella Union.
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