As Father John Misty, Joshua Tillman has delighted in willfully slippery inscrutability, operating somewhere between self-aware dirtbag, wry observer of modern rot, and total wet blanket. Following 2018’s God’s Favorite Customer, Tillman issued a pair of reserved singles, co-wrote for Post Malone, and supposedly got a song rejected from A Star Is Born. Now he’s got a little earring. He has a new record coming out. And as his latest song suggests, he has a weird crush.

Nodding to the bittersweet 1964 showbiz musical starring Barbra Streisand, “Funny Girl” arrives drenched in Old Hollywood affectation. Tillman goes all-in on smitten ripples of strings, brass, and timpani, a luxurious orchestral sweep wrapped around a one-sided “romance.” Addressing an object of intrigue, Tillman skates the line between infatuation and contempt. He undermines flickers of affection (“You knocked me out when you charmed the pants off Letterman”) with barbs too pointed to come off as a harmless attachment (“Yeah, you’re young but, baby, you’re not getting younger”). Is the shit-talk a diversion, misdirected self-loathing, or overreach from a crank who’s long reveled in his own displays of uneasy, indulgent horniness?