Chloë and the Next 20th Century
Chloë and the Next 20th Century is the fifth studio album by American musician Josh Tillman under the stage name Father John Misty, released through Sub Pop and Bella Union on April 8, 2022. Background and recording Chloë and the Next 20th Century is Father John Misty's fifth studio album and his first full-length project since the release of God's Favorite Customer in 2018. He began writing the album in spring 2020. It was recorded between August and December 2020. He entered the studio in August having written "Kiss Me (I Loved You)", "We Could Be Strangers", "Buddy's Rendezvous" and "The Next 20th Century". Following that session, Tillman mostly conceived what the album would be and wrote the rest of the songs before recording resumed in October 2020. It was co-produced by Tillman and longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson. This was the first record Tillman had recorded at Wilson's new Fivestar Studios located in the hills of Topanga, California above LA. The two first recorded "basic tracks" at Fivestar Studios, whereas strings, brass, and woodwinds were recorded in a session at United Recordings which featured numerous musicians, including trumpeter Wayne Bergeron and saxophonist Dan Higgins. The album was engineered and mixed by Dave Cerminara and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. Music Chloë and the Next 20th Century draws sonic inspiration from big band, jazz standards, and traditional pop. It has been compared to Randy Newman's Sail Away (1972) and Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973). The album is distinguished by its cinematic quality, with Mojo calling it as a "Hollywood album moving from the '30s through to the '60s and melding those influences to create an imagined version of the past." This Old Hollywood influence is evident in the brass arrangements and string sections on tracks such as "Funny Girl", the "booming" instrumentation of "Q4" which has been compared to the film music of composer John Barry, and "Goodbye Mr. Blue", which has been called an homage to Nilsson's song "Everybody's Talkin'" which served as the theme to the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. Critics have commented on the album's more "hopeful" tone compared to previous outings, with Tillman indulging in a nostalgia for an earlier F. Scott Fitzgerald era heavily steeped in excess and wealth, instead of the mortality of God's Favorite Customer or societal annihilation of Pure Comedy. A nod to the style of earlier albums comes through on the album's last (and longest) track, "The Next 20th Century", an anachronistic modern prog tune which meanders over a low-key bossa nova beat and has been described as "seven minutes of phantasmagorical imagery" and a "moody, hallucinatory dirge". The song references dark corners of human history, Nazis, Jesus Christ and the faded celebrity of Batman-era Val Kilmer amongst other things. In the song, the glitzy showbiz and glamorous 20s Hollywood façade fades away as Tillman muses over apocalyptic concerns and the fear that we may be living through an extension of the last hundred years instead