Two songs into his encore, just about two hours into his sold-out show at London’s venerated Royal Albert Hall, Father John Misty introduces his gentle 10-minute epic, “So I’m Growing Old on Magic Mountain”. “So,” the singer-songwriter born Joshua Tillman says, lilting his guitar strap around his bearded neck, “here’s yet another interminable meditation on ageing.”
The crowd cheers. They’ve just lured Tillman back to the stage following a standing ovation for “Mahashmashana”, the nine-minute, blustering, saxophone-speckled title track from his sixth album of trenchant indie folk-rock, released in November. He’s being characteristically wry, but another interminable meditation on ageing is precisely what they want.
