Father John Misty - Funtimes In Babylon

What this video is

Released June 5, 2013, over a year after the album Fear Fun (Sub Pop, May 2012), this video arrived at a peak moment of critical re-evaluation of that record and during a major summer festival run. Tillman had recently left Fleet Foxes and was consolidating his Father John Misty persona as a vehicle for sardonic, literary indie folk. The VHS-degraded, post-apocalyptic visual language tapped into a broader…

Why it matters

Canonizes the VHS-lo-fi aesthetic as an expressive choice within the 2012–2014 Sub Pop indie folk moment. The co-direction by the artist himself reinforces the auteur-musician model common to the era. As the opening track of Fear Fun, the video serves as a definitive visual statement of the Father…

The director

Co-directed by Josh Tillman (Father John Misty), singer-songwriter and former Fleet Foxes drummer, and Grant James, a music video director and producer also credited on the Fear Fun track 'This Is Sally Hatchet.' Grant James served as both producer and…