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Thanks for the link, Steve! I'd never heard this song (lyrics pasted below), but agree with your suggestion that a sort of late-stage, exhausted, un-transcendent transcendentalism is lamented here. Whitman seems even more relevant than Emerson, perhaps, as the ironic backdrop for that lament -- as if this is what, to borrow a little from T.S. Eliot, all the celebration, sensory pleasure, and self-affirmation have produced at last, not a bang of elevated awareness but only a bored whimper.

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Bored in the USA
Father John Misty

How many people rise and say
"My brain's so awfully glad to be here
For yet another mindless day"?

I've got all morning to obsessively accrue
A small nation of meaningful objects
And they've got to represent me too

By this afternoon, I'll live in debt
By tomorrow, be replaced by children

How many people rise and think
"Oh good, the stranger's body's still here
Our arrangement hasn't changed?"

Now I've got a lifetime to consider all the ways
I've grown more disappointing to you
As my beauty warps and fades
I suspect you feel the same
When I was young, I dreamt of a passionate obligation to a roommate

Is this the part where I get all I ever wanted?
Who said that?
Can I get my money back?

Just a little bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, white Jesus
Bored in the USA
Oh, they gave me a useless education
And a subprime loan
On a craftsman home
Keep my prescriptions filled
And now I can't get off
But I can kind of deal
Oh, with being bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, President Jesus
I'm bored in the USA
How did it happen?
Bored in the USA

Well put Geoff and Liz, I agree with your Whitman comparisons. in fact, it was he who came to my mind after first hearing this song, in that it is a series of vignettes much in the same way "Song of Myself" is. I also agree with your Green Day/ punk comparisons for I think it highlights the same empty protest that is evident in Tillman's song. In fact after reading your post and then revisiting the lyrics to "Bored in the USA," I couldn't help but notice that it has the makings for an awesome punk song. That being said, coupled with the way in which it is ultimately presented to the audience, the song further exemplifies the late-stage exhaustion Geoff noted. Furthermore, I think it underscore Tillman's position coming from a post-punk perspective where years of fruitless protest have done nothing but reinforce one's dependence on the system, i.e. Billie Joe Armstrong (lead singer from Green Day) for one, and the countless number of punk rockers who end up in a vicious cycle of rehab.

Thanks for the input.

On a side note, here is a really insightful review of the song I found, and on pitchfork no less!

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/17207-father-john-misty-bored-in-the-usa/
A central irony of Josh Tillman's very likable Father John Misty alias is that he's so often the exact person most indie rock fans totally fucking loathe in real life—a kind of mystic himbo who somehow exists outside our economy and labor force, drinking, drugging, and fucking his way through life, and yet the rent's always paid. People tell him he looks better with age. No consequences of note are suffered. Least of all, he attracts not even a fraction of the shit Lana Del Rey gets for embodying a parallel sort of archetype. Some might call that male privilege and Tillman probably would, too. "Bored In The USA" casually drops a nuclear bomb on the entire franchise of privileged white men making their spiritual void the dark center of the universe.
Appropriately, the music teases at toxic levels of mawkishness. Tillman's alone at his piano, doing his best Harry Nilsson and having the nerve to ask, "How many people rise and think, 'Oh good, the stranger's body is still here/ Our arrangement hasn't changed,'" when most folks stay up nights worrying about dying alone. Likewise, the title itself is sung in a way that doesn't seem to mock Bruce Springsteen—it sounds like Tillman's mocking those who would go after that low-hanging fruit, ignoring the Boss' complexities to show their shallow disaffectedness with the American Dream. Or maybe Tillman's just one of us, not even sure if we're being sarcastic anymore.
"Bored In the USA" has a tragicomic resonance, as all of our friends are on Facebook complaining about election results they find awfully scary even if they're unsure how they'll realistically be affected. When Tillman lays out the woes of the upwardly mobile man who had the ladder cut out from under him—"They gave me a useless education/ A subprime loan/ A craftsman home/ Keep my prescriptions filled/ Now I can't get off, but I can kinda deal"—he pipes in a goddamn laugh track to underscore that his concerns aren't clever. They're clichés worthy of a terrible sitcom, and that "boredom" is like most chronic conditions, a malady of the affluent. So there you have the devastating punchline in "Bored In the USA"'s epic #whitepeopleproblems gag—that joke isn't funny anymore.

Quote from jmlevesque on December 6, 2014, 13:25

Sit down somewhere you can quiet your mind.

Contemplate the ways in which your mind is like a cup and a tea pot is all the ideas and beliefs in the world.

Angrily throw the pot of tea as hard as you can against the cup and scream, “I can do whatever the fuck I want to do!”.

Use your freedom to go buy a $5 whole milk latte from a globo-national corporation and take a seat outside near the bus stop squinting in the mid-day sun.

Oh wow, I really like this! I feel like there is a huge movement ready to rise up out of sentiments like these, like another renaissance of true freedom and self-discovery is verging on the next decade. Seems like people are sick of being fed ideas and are itching to break out and make others realize the hypocritical nature of American freedom. It's the idea that you are free, but you are really guided into a few choices that you aren't happy with, but it's the best you can do. It's the act of defiance that is buying a 5 dollar latte. This anecdote embraces the irony that if you feel like you're doing something spontaneous and you're doing it angrily and with passion, you're a rebel, but you're not actually doing anything. I'm looking forward to seeing a shift away from confused self pity, and towards this, a more direct, succinct commentary on the decline of true freedom in America.

Here's a toast to the emerging generation of great American writers. They might not change the world, but they sure as hell know about the problems in their country, and they're going to prod at them with as many snidely scathing witticisms as they can muster. And I'm definitely looking forward to that.