#gutter poet

[vintage-tigre]

Newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas

[vintage-tigre]

[jivetalkmusic]

Josh Tillman, part spit and dirt gutter poet, part disinterested avant-guard balladeer, has composed a list of things to be worried about whilst managing to maintain none of it has shit to do with him.

Holy Shit traces an overbearing web of contemporary worries and concerns against a backdrop of generalised resentment, disaffection and denial. As the worries amass, and the composition ascends from an honest, boot-tapping, thumbs-under-belt-buckle swagger to an ostentatious, imperial waltz, Tillman’s oh-so earnest delivery is, you suspect, belied by a wry smile and a glint, with the whole thing taking on a farcical quality. Saturated with dead-pan, darkly-comic, arch quotables, from an album full of the same, Holy Shit cements Tillman’s position as one of the most distinctive lyricists of the day.

Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues nailed the peculiar burden of the millennial, living a life-as-project with total responsibility for the outcomes of free choice. They yearned naively for some good-old-fashioned determinism. In the last 4 years Tillman has gone from nostalgic escapism, to mocking resentment. Still just as helpless then, just with a smirk.

Loz