Father John Misty and Lucinda Williams at The Greek: Concert Review

Early in his headlining look at The Greek in Los Angeles, Father John Misty Offered its closest equivalent to a call for the evening and calmly told the whole house in Griffith Park, “I came about at the same time as everyone else, and I dropped up the hill and I looked at everyone when they went in here, and it sounds fun, but I was like …” He paused solemn for effect. “… I really hope they are doing well.”

The same word would be obvious whoop-and-holler bait for almost all other artists who played the arena, but when he came through Misty’s voice it was a laugh line, although he was certainly as serious as he was the deadpan. In the Greek you could find pockets from the audience who were there to party (and woe to you if you were in one of these chatting circles whose obvious single exposure to foggy was the uncharacterist Chirpy Public-Radio-Radio-Away Clamp “Real Love Baby”). But most fans know that there will be serious issues that are dealt with at a FJM show: life, death, meaninglessness, misogyny, microdose, vains in the show industry, religion and alcoholism’s opiates and our fate as a volatile species on earth. Does that sound like a good time?

Damn right do it, in the hands of Mr. Misty, who has an unlimited capacity to make emotion thoughts feel good. This is not because he is ironically contrasting music and lyrics – although irony is way, way, way in his controlhouse – but because even his most despairing choir has a kind of bitter -cute uplifting that finally feels a little more grand than grave. He is one of contemporary music’s biggest lyricists and One of our most beautiful melodists (a good combination, when you can find it, by the way), so there is usually some form of euphoric effect even in dispemper or dystopia. His wish is our command when it comes to actually enjoying things that sound more challenging on paper, or even on vinyl than it does in the meat.

Misty is now about six months after agreeing to tour behind her album publishing in November last year, “Mahashmashana.” (That tongue-twister title is a hindu term that basic signifies “cream”… well, we told you about heaven.) For those of us getting heaven on the load leg of this tour, it may be the first excuse to hear oe of that music in a little sitting. Best Records, It’s Heavy-Going Enough that it’s not the Kind of Album Most Fans are going to have on replay all year long. It was a beautiful thing to visit – completely, because Misty performed all eight of the album’s mostly long songs, to the advantage of the set.

He had to retire to make room for wealth in new material, and that is good. The most remarkable outsoring fans are likely to notice this tour is what may have been regarded as his signature song, “Pure Comedy”, which spent about seven years as the effective climate in his show before it became retired. It was his philosophical Magnum Opus for a reason, but over time it felt hearing the world’s largest TED call, but again and again. The new songs that have replaced it and some other dropped catalog tracks feel less recitative, more bound to make sure that each note of the melodies is as haunting as the words.

This tournament cycle is his first in a while without at least a small orchestra on a trailer. The strings felt necessary when he made shows behind 202’s lush and intermittent nostalgic “Chloë and the 1900s”, but while the newer things also use equally strong orchestral arrangements, the arrangements of these songs on the Greek show felt just a little stronger with scissors but no violins. (Synths did the job of recreating the string speeches sometimes.) Nobody in rock has done a better use of orchestration in recent years, so it may have been a regret of regrets in seeing the stage that has now been set up with a less elaborate bandstand. But all the questions about it was the right conversation was set aside when he came to the soft ballad “Summer’s Gone”, which has thick swelling of strings on the disc that felt like a nice touch at that time. To hear him perform the gripping complaint at the Greek accompanied by almost nothing but piano was so powerful that it is now a bit tough to go back and hear the album version. Either way, it’s a song that sounds fantastic Randy Newman-Esque but peeled and less ornate, it’s like a Rawer Randy.

Another comparison that comes a lot for Misty is Nilsson, with his obviously more melodic voice … so you might think of “Nilsson is doing Newman.” Or given the larger cosmic and philosophical themes that Misty often goes for, “Nilsson makes Nietzsche.” His set had its part of the 70s singer writer instrumental tropes, including scissors and steel guitar-comfort food instruments whose warm touches help some of Misty’s more lacing songs feel like you are treated with a conditioner.

Misty does not hang with huge lots of stage bonds today, which is almost a shame, given how eagerly the audience predicts that his temporary dry pieces between songs. “We would like to pick things up now,” he said at a time. “But I have valuable few of these types of numbers,” he pointed out, “so we have to make this sad country ballad” – that it is “Goodbye Mr. Blue”, a story about how the death of a split cat becomes a death in a growing relationship. He apparently thinks of Oldie “nothing good ever happens on the damn thirsty crow” as an unmatched part of his show, even though he was apparently no longer a personal favorite, because he introduced the song as “increasingly unsuitable for me to perform” – but he noted, “I’m not in the industry not to give you what you want.” When he introduced the newer ballad “Where do you” he said, “Can I give you some advice? Just abolish.” (He has actually said that a real dissociative state that he experienced during the pandemic was the inspiration for that melody. “” This works very effectively for me, “he added,” which, when the set opens with a 10-minute disco song (“I suppose only time only makes fools of us all”), For me.

Of course, some of the audience members know about dissociation. Like when he sang one of his established classics, “Ballad of the Dying Man”, with lines that “eventually take the dying man his final breath / But first controls his news feed to see what he is” bout to miss, “and I could not let be distracted by the trio of their youth to use that moment to show each other photos of each. deliver all The ironic content of a gig without some audience participation.)

Four of the newer songs in particular made a powerful impact during the show. “Mental Health” has a more soaring run than any song with the odd and un-anthemical title is entitled to. The central trop in the melody – that it is people who clock in as psychologically unhealthy who may have the fixedest grip on reality – maybe or may not meet you where you live. But when he loosens a little with the high -minded language and just sings “running, baby, running, beby, run,” it feels enough for you want to throw away your medications and break into a crazy sprint.

And an almost climatic trio of “Mahashhana” song-song-“She Cleans Up”, “Screamland” and “Summer’s Gone” is an equally good run of back-to-back material as all song sequences he has ever had in his tours before. “She cleans up” is the rogue concert’s prominent as it always promised to be on the record, but even more funky and furious with this particular band. (And apropos for the LA setting, with its stories about the Hollywood -casting sofa.) The more epic “screaming land” is a high and wonderful Howl that seems to be his hold of escapism and the limitations in religion -what he joked referred to in an interview as “a mutilated hillsong,” which will say, a very “that will say, a very dark praise. (This song, too, had a local application – it finds salvation in the singer’s lover picking sky and driving heaven to the desert from the drawing room, which happens to be a bar just down the hill from the greek on hillhurst. Did not?) Solo piano accompaniment here, a simultaneous wish that the california summer heat would dissipate and that the season of peaches and skinned knees would last forever. Which benefit.

Misty does not include “Real Love Baby” in his set today, but he knows to end on a couple of tops from his catalog for codes, even though it is only the ending lines in these songs that offer some comfort. “Holy Shit” catalogs half the sins of the universe, then end with “what I do not see is what it has to do with you and me” – a line that has a lot to achieve, by turning the melody into a love song, but gets it done. And “I love you, honey,” who makes him pray, “don’t give in despair,” makes the nice trick of fooling you into thinking you’ve just seen the world’s most uplifting concert. You might just do it, if you are the right mark of broken romantic.

To provide support at the end of the tour was Lucinda Williams -A curious choice, in a way, because she tends to be as simple and elemental in his root-rock strategy as he is decorated and sniffy. But it worked, in a naturally complementary way, and especially for the possibly small subset of us in the audience that already comes in considering that both Fjm and Lu are among the greats.

Williams didn’t go out “are you okay?” From her catalog to carry out among her seven choices as an opening act, but it was probably the question of part of the audience’s mind, namely those who are aware that she received a stroke 2020. The answer is much so. While she gets help slowly moving on and off the stage, Williams now stands through her performances, an upgrade from her sitting show last fall, a sight that cheered to all her fans at hand.

Two prominent covers gave her expert band room to stretch out, with the old hand Doug Pettibone who made the necessary sun on “while my guitar gently weeps.” It didn’t even turn out to be the most important guitar soloing showcase for her set, as Pettibone was combined by Marc Ford for a double guitar training on “Rockin ‘in the free world.” But the highlight remained the singer writer’s own: “Joy.” “You took my delight, I want it back” always felt like a kind of crying in her catalog, and the more fruitful so now that the audience has seen her battle back to flourishing on stage.

Father John Misty Setlist, Greek Theater, Los Angeles, July 25, 2025:

I guess the time only makes fools of us all
Josh tillman and unintentional dose
The night Josh Tillman came to our apt.
Be you
Mr. Tillman
Nancy from now on
Goodbye Mr. Blue
Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for two virgins)
Mental health
Ballad of the dying man
God’s favorite customer
Nothing good ever happens at the fucking thirsty crow
She cleans up
Screaming land
Summer is gone
Mahashmashana
(Encore)
Holy shit
I love you, baby

Lucinda Williams Setlist, Greek Theater, Los Angeles, July 25, 2025:

Let’s get the tape back
Stolen moments
Drunk angel
Low life life
Fruit of my work
You can’t control me
While my guitar cried gently
Joy
Rockin ‘in the free world