Father John Misty, Mahashmashana Review

By Eliana Fermi

There are records that entertain and comfort, and then there are records that feel like a journey that takes you through a transformation, leaving you in a different state than when you began. Mahashmashana is one of these. Father John Misty, the shamanic moniker of Josh Tillman, invites listeners to step into a world where the line between death and rebirth blurs, where every lyric and melody feels like it’s flickering on the edge of being consumed by flames.

The album’s title, Mahashmashana—Sanskrit for “Great Cremation Ground”—is the first hint that this is no collection of lighthearted soft rock songs. It’s a reminder that every ending is a beginning, that fire destroys and purifies. Here, Tillman has made an album of funeral pyres for the ego, where he burns away old selves and roles and emerges singing from the ashes. And the listener, too, is invited into this ritual—to sit by the fire, watch it blaze, and perhaps offer up something of their own to the flames.

If Mahashmashana is a cremation ground, then each track is a different pyre—a different aspect of Tillman’s persona being set alight. The emotional landscape here is complex, filled with contradictions: humor and sorrow, intimacy and grandeur, irony and sincerity. This isn’t just a sonic journey; it’s an emotional rite of passage through songwriting and music.

“Mental Health” stands out as an initiation of sorts as Tillman’s warm and yet weary voice cuts through an arrangement of smooth, jazzy tones. The hypnotic guitar part and restrained percussion conjure the calm before a storm, and the lyrics delve into the tension between madness and necessity. “Insanity, baby it’s indispensable,” Tillman croons with a wink, inviting us to see the necessity of chaos in the journey toward self-discovery. The crescendos that follow feel less like a musical climax and more like an emotional eruption—a cathartic release that is at once beautiful and painful.

In “Screamland,” Tillman offers a confrontation with the specter of ego death. The track’s orchestral opening is deceptively gentle, a prelude to the roaring storm that follows. There’s a sense of Tillman wrestling with his own reflection, the way a shaman might battle spirits in the dead of night. “Stay young, get numb, keep dreaming,” he intones, the refrain echoing until it disintegrates into a musical maelstrom—his voice twisted and distorted, becoming something unrecognizable. It’s as if the ego is being dismantled piece by piece, until only fragments remain.

Tillman has always had a gift for lush, cinematic orchestrations, but in Mahashmashana, these arrangements take on the weight of ritual. The title track, a sprawling nine-minute opener, unfolds with the emotion of a song acting like an invocation. The strings swell and sigh like a chorus of mourners, the drum rolls like distant thunder. There’s something ceremonial in the way the instruments enter and exit, each adding to the mood and enhancing the sense that we are part of something sacred, something transformative. The building string parts unfold like a cry from deep within—the kind of sound that doesn’t just fill the air but seems to hang there, suspended, resonating with some primal part of the listener. It’s a reminder that this isn’t just music—it’s an evolving offering.

“Screamland” is an example of the album’s many visceral moments. The imagery Tillman arouses—of screaming into the void, of clinging to dreams even as they slip through your fingers—is lingering, but it’s the music that really drives it home. The way the strings swell, the piano pounds, the way Tillman’s voice gets lost in the storm of sound, all working to form a sonic representation of dissolution, of ego-death in real-time.

In contrast, “Being You” reflects the impact of a quieter, more introspective moment. Tillman sings as though in conversation with his own alter ego, questioning the masks he’s worn, the roles he’s played. “Can you tell me how it feels, being you?” he asks, the question hanging in the air like smoke. The instrumentation is stripped back—just a simple drum pattern and shimmering guitars, as though Tillman is laying himself bare, unadorned. It’s a track about identity, about the struggle to reconcile the public persona with the private self—a theme that runs throughout the album.

“Summer’s Gone,” meanwhile, is Tillman leaning into the lush strings as his crooning vocals induce a bygone era, pulling from an almost Sinatra-esque vocal style as he laments for the passage of time. It’s a final dance at twilight, a bittersweet acknowledgment of impermanence. There’s a deep melancholy here, but also a sense of acceptance—a recognition that everything ends, and that’s what makes it beautiful.

Throughout Mahashmashana, Tillman plays with imagery drawn from mythology, philosophy, and personal experience, creating a narrative that is as much about death as it is about rebirth. There are echoes of Eastern philosophy, of Jungian psychology, of the myths of old—all woven together in Tillman’s cryptic but compelling lyrics.

The idea of ego-death runs through many of these songs, particularly “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose,” where he sings of treating “acid with anxiety,” a wry, self-deprecating nod to his own struggles with mental health and the dissolution of self. The references to Humpty Dumpty, to shattered selves that can never be made whole again, speak to the vulnerability and the rawness at the core of this album. It’s not about putting the pieces back together; it’s about learning to live with the cracks, to find beauty in the brokenness.

Classifying Mahashmashana within a single genre would be an exercise in futility. There are elements of jazz, folk, orchestral grandeur, and even psychedelic rock—each woven together to create a sound setting that is compelling. The genre-fluid nature of the album adds to its shamanic quality—each track feels like a different phase of the journey, each offering something new, something unexpected.

“I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All,” with its late ’70s disco-funk groove, stands in stark contrast to the orchestral sweep of “Mental Health” or the stripped-back intimacy of “Being You”. But rather than feeling disjointed, these shifts in sound feel deliberate—each genre shift a different mask, a different facet of Tillman’s evolving self.

Mahashmashana is not an album that offers easy answers or comforting escapism. It’s an album that proposes engagement, inviting listeners to step into the fire and confront their own fears and desires. Thereby, it offers a ritual of letting go, of shedding the skin of the past and emerging, not necessarily whole but transformed. Mahashmashana is Tillman inviting us to join him in his musical cremation ground, encouraging us to let the old selves burn away, and perhaps to find, amidst the ashes, something new, something raw, something real. That’s the short of it!

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