"I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All" - Father John Misty, live at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London (June 2026)

Waiting 14 years to see Father John Misty live for the first time can leave one wondering: what version of Josh Tillman is going to show up on stage tonight?

I had followed the former Fleet Foxes drummer since the start of his solo-career reinvention as Father John Misty in 2012. But this was only through studio albums, salacious interviews, loucher-than-life live clips, and the second-hand online folklore that builds around a performer before you finally get to stand in the same room as him.

The pivot from the supposedly self-serious J. Tillman era into a profane, poetic preacher had me hooked from the start of this project with his wry wit, smart storytelling, and the absurd fact that songs this acidic could come from the voice of an angel.

That is the funny thing about being a Father John Misty fan: imagine the literary lineage of prophet-poets like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, but with Elton John’s honeyed howl and the sleazy Seventies stylings of Steely Dan. A crooner-philosopher making beautiful songs out of ugly thoughts.

The first two albums remain sacred ground for me, while each record since has tested my intellect, patience, and fandom in different ways. 2024’s Mahashmashana felt like another lush, funny, apocalyptic chapter in the tale of Tillman coming to terms with the many selves he has staged over the years. And I was anxious to see the Misty masks I had come to know for over a decade before he cremated them.

At the start of 2026, LIDO Festival at Victoria Park had originally looked like my chance to finally catch the American singer-songwriter live in London, until its June dates were moved to late August to protect the park's ground conditions, and his 12th June bill with CMAT and Sharon Van Etten could not be rescheduled.

In its place came something far more intriguing and intimate: a one-off O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire show billed as “an evening with” the artist. No support act, and no obvious clue as to whether we were getting a standard tour stop or something stranger.

Standing in the queue outside the theatre, I secured some insider perspective but was only marginally closer to solving this Misty mystery.

I got talking with a guy who had seen him 11 times before and had the thousand-yard-stare tales to prove it. He spoke of those maniacal mid-2010s shows where Misty thrilled and thrashed about, and every gig teetered on the edge of chaos and combustibility. Whatever was or wasn’t coursing through the younger Tillman, the man had clearly built a reputation as one of modern indie’s great live-wire showmen.

It confirmed what I had seen online in years past, but did the now-45-year-old Tillman have the stamina or desire to keep chasing this kind of crazy?

Coming in the second year of touring Mahashmashana (and with two new one-off singles ‘The Old Law’ and ‘The Payoff’ in tow), the show at Shepherd’s Bush unfolded as a generous career-spanning 22-song audience with the many moods of Misty. What struck me most, though, was not simply the song selection, but Tillman’s technical temperance and theatricality.

The feral flashes are still there, but they are rationed now, deployed with precision rather than desperation. He often began songs with an acoustic guitar slung across his chest, singing with controlled elegance while keeping one eye on the fretboard. Then, midway through a song, the guitar would come off, and the actor would step forward.

Switching from musician to vessel, Tillman was free to prowl, preen, pose, and ponder. He stared down the room, locked eyes with audience members, made funny faces, threw out hand gestures, and turned lyrics into things to be inhabited rather than merely sung.

This theatrical thread in his stagecraft makes sense, considering his 2022 album Chloë and the Next 20th Century, where Tillman toyed with 1940s Old Hollywood glamour and deliberately shifted attention to other characters and perspectives. Just one story from that suite got an outing at Shepherd’s Bush (the bittersweet ballad ‘Goodbye Mr. Blue’), but its lessons lingered on in newer tracks like ‘Mental Health’, which I appreciate more now having seen each stanza receive the thespian treatment.

Father John Misty performing 'Mental Health', live at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

He had thankfully not lost his humour through these phases of reinvention and seemed happy to be back in the building (“feels like home, my phone connected to the WiFi”). Later, after someone near the front grew light-headed and needed attention, he returned from the pause to share an absurd anecdote about fame, anonymity, and graveyards.

While on holiday in rural Devon, he said, he had been walking through a village cemetery when he spotted the only other person there. That person slowly realised that the long-haired, bearded man among the headstones was, improbably, Josh Tillman.

I cringed and cackled as he described the dawning recognition, the sheer improbability of the location, and the pure comedy of being famous enough to be recognised even when you have retreated to the middle of nowhere among the dead. Given the existence of his debut lead single ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings’ and its cemetery setting, perhaps he should know better than to think such a place is neutral territory.

That song, incidentally, stayed buried. It had been one of my great hopes going in, but the set was too rich to make its absence feel like a wound.

We old-heads still had the joyful ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)’ to cherish (with the mariachi horns on record swapped for a stunning saxophone solo), as well as crossover pop hit ‘Real Love Baby’, the witty ramblings of ‘I’m Writing A Novel’, and the cinematic ‘I Love You, Honeybear’ to cap off the main event.

Father John Misty performing 'I'm Writing A Novel', live at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

Father John Misty performing 'I Love You, Honeybear', live at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

“Let’s see what we can get to in this meticulously engineered encore set,” Tillman thought out loud with trademark dryness as he returned to the stage.

He burned through ‘Pure Comedy’, one of his grandest diagnoses of the species, and delivered it with a fiery fervour like something that a madman would conceive. Things edged further into rowdier, rockier territory on ‘The Payoff’ and ‘She Cleans Up’, before the campfire crooning of ‘Holy Shit’ and the ten-minute transcendental ‘Mahashmashana’ took the evening towards its great cremation ground.

Then came the convulsive, the compulsive, the conclusive: ‘The Ideal Husband’. A frantic, fearless finish that reminded me that the measured showman can still summon the feral younger Misty when the moment demands it. And now it's out.

Spilling back into the streets of Shepherd’s Bush, I saw the same 11-show veteran again outside the venue. It was probably the best Father John Misty show he had seen in about five years, helped by the fact that Tillman was “talking far more with the crowd”.

Not that I needed permission to trust my own awe. After years of missing him, I finally got to stand in the room with the man, the myth, the Misty. I guess that time makes fools of us all, but sometimes it delivers the goods.

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