FATHER JOHN MISTY
All Music and Lyrics by Josh Tillman
Produced by Jonathan Wilson and Josh Tillman
Released February 10, 2015
Dedicated to Alivia Kleinfeldt and Karly Deno for knowing long before me and pointing me in the right direction
"I don't write songs about girls anymore
I have to write songs about women
No more boy meets girl, boy loses girl
More like, man tries to figure out what the hell went wrong"
-"I'm An Adult Now"
Music and Lyrics by Moe Berg
Performed by The Pursuit Of Happiness
Music chooses you.
I have written those words over and again on this site and I mean it emphatically every single time. But even for all of the times music does happen to choose you, sometimes that very same music needs a little push.
For as much music as I have discovered by myself, there has been just as much music that I have been guided towards by others, but even so, the music itself still chooses you just the same. I am thinking of a time, for instance, when one friend felt that I would really love The Flaming Lips. In doing so, she loaned me her copy of "The Soft Bulletin" (released June 22, 1999) and as I listened to the album that very first time, and despite all of the elements about the music that I knew that I would enjoy, the album was indeed quite lost on me. It wasn't until the release of their then subsequent album "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" (released July 16, 2002) where The Flaming Lips' specialized musical vision took hold of me, then inviting me to return to "The Soft Bulletin" which on those listens, the music connected powerfully and I loved it so much that I really questioned why I didn't fall for it initially.
Another example was the music of Jeff Buckley, an artist many people kept pointing me towards but for whatever reasons, his music never took hold of me initially no matter how many tries I happened to give to him. And then, inexplicably, one day while driving around, something ephemeral entered my consciousness and instructed me to head to my local library (which is directly on my way home) and see if Buckley's album "Grace" (released August 23, 1994) was available for check out. So, I stopped at the library only to find "Grace" sitting within all of the CDs as if specially waiting for me. And on that listen, I was ready and finally, finally understood.
At this time, dear readers and listeners, my attention is squarely focused upon Father John Misty, the pseudonym of singer/songwriter/musician Josh Tillman, former drummer for Fleet Foxes, By now, it would be of no surprise to any of you out there that "I Love You, Honeybear," Tillman's second album under the Father John Misty moniker, is easily one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2015. I have seen the highly impressionistic and pink hued cover artwork plus the heaping praise for this album throughout the year and while I was curious as to what the fuss was all about, clips that I heard via You Tube did not capture me to the level where my curiosity would be piqued enough to get me to head to the record store and purchase a copy. But soon, friends and acquaintances began to speak to me about the wonder and beauty of Father John Misty's album and I found myself beginning to wonder.
The first person of note to speak s highly of the album happened to be Alivia Kleinfeldt, bassist for the local Madison band Modern Mod. In conversations with her, she asked me if I had happened to like Fleet Foxes, to which I explained that I really hadn't heard their albums and when I did happen to hear their songs, I always thought that they were possibly another band altogether. In essence, I had not made the connection between the songs I had heard with the group itself. From this point, she began to ask me if I had heard of Father John Misty and she then further expressed, in a flow of words that practically gushed, about how much she had loved the album. Push #1...
Push #2 occurred when I met Karly Deno, a lovely 21 year old who joined the summer staff of my preschool this year. She and I forged an immediate connection simply and solely over a Beatles T-shirt that she happened to be wearing during her interview and we soon began sharing quick music picks with each other, hoping to point the other person towards new musical horizons. Weeks after our first meeting, the name Father John Misty was invoked and entered my atmosphere again as she (also in a tone that essentially gushed) expressed to me about how much I needed to hear his new album for how gorgeous it happened to be. Strange forces at work indeed...
Push #3 arrived on the day of the 3rd Annual WLHA Resurrection/Reunion Weekend, where after a five hour stint on the local radio airwaves and subsequent victory lunch at Ian's Pizza on State Street, I found myself looking upwards, as my friends Kelly and Sue and I trudged back up the street on the way to the parking ramp, and having my eyes rest upon the marquee of the legendary Orpheum theater and seeing the name...you guessed it...Father John Misty splashed all across. The third time was he charm as I traveled to B-Side Records a few days later and armed with the intent of solely purchasing the latest Tame Impala album. But once I arrived, I added Father John Misty to my purchases.
Finally, I listened and on that very first listen, I was floored.
Father John Misty's "I Love You, Honeybear" is an emotional hurricane of a concept album, one that depicts the real life love story between himself and Emma, the woman who would become his wife. Yet, this album is by no means a sugary sweet affair. While the album is undeniably romantic and deliriously so, any romanticism arrives with all of the internal baggage and trauma firmly intact making for a listening experience that charts what love actually is instead of what exists in wish fulfillment fantasies. As with the epigraph that opened this posting from The Pursuit Of Happiness, Father John Misty does not craft his musical love story in simplistic or remotely cliched platitudes. He sifts, burrows and delves so deeply into dangerous and depressive emotional terrains that by album's end, not only is the wind knocked clean out of you, you d realize what a miracle the gift of love actually is.
With a sonic palate that suggests Pasty Cline as arranged and produced by "Pet Sounds" era Brian Wilson, "I Love You, Honeybear" opens with the sweeping title track, which serves as an overture of sorts. As Misty's lead vocals possess a soaring quality, the backing vocals surround with a certain melancholy, solidifying the bittersweet tone (with a bit of emphasis on the "bitter") that encompasses the album in its entirety. Additionally, don't let the facile nature of the song's title fool you either. This track introduces us to both Misty and Emma, both of ravenous sexual appetites, as described by the opening images of "Mascara, blood, ash and cum/On the Rorschach sheets where we make love," and individually armed and/or burdened with his "Mother's depression" and her "Father's scorn and a wayward aunt's schizophrenia," as they thumb their collective noses at the world's impending demise. It is a song of "you and me against the world at the end of the world," a romantic whirlwind where their love is able to withstand all manner of apocalyptic tragedies from global market crashes and death piling up in the streets for as Misty declares to Emma, "My love, you're the one I want to watch the ship go down with...Don't give into despair/'Cause I love you, honeybear."
The romanticism explodes into a South of the Border styled cinematic widescreen musical (complete with Mariachi brass band) with the album's second track, "Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins)," obviously a nod to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's infamous "Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins" (released November 11, 1968). Here, Misty and Emma, travelling around Los Angeles, enveloped completely within each other, find romantic and sexual bliss. He envisions making love with her in the kitchen as she wears her "wedding dress someone was probably murdered in." Yet, falling into nostalgia, he remembers their beginnings...
"First time, you let me stay the night despite your own rules
You took off early to go cheat your way through film school
You left a note in your perfect script: 'Stay as long as you want!'
I haven't left your bed since"
The album's first real pangs of anxiety arrive in the electronically tinged "True Affection," the only song on the album that contains a musically stylistic difference from the remainder of the album as Misty's troubled communication with Emma via cell phones and text messages provide barriers instead of additional avenues to the intense intimacy he craves.
"The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt." is one of the album highest points as this anti-ballad either describes Misty's feelings upon first meeting Emma or better yet, perhaps the song is a flashback to a time long before Misty ever even met Emma, a time when Misty's personal associations and relationships with women were decidedly more dubious. In this song, Misty unleashes a eloquently and viciously laugh out loud litany of insults towards some young female whom he finds wholly insufferable. Misty hates the way she speaks ("She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes/And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream"), the way she sings ("I hate that soulful affectation White girls put on/Why don't you move to the Delta?"), and her pseudo-superior attitude ("Someone's been told too many times they're beyond their years") yet he finds himself indulging in nasty sex with her anyway, as the song ends abruptly as if Misty himself cannot bear to acknowledge his own dalliances.
For me, here is where the overall emotionally messy nature of "I Love You, Honeybear" begins to come into focus. Yes, for the first four songs, I think it will be apparent that Misty has utilized an undeniably sharp sense of lyricism to compliment and even contrast with the musical surroundings that are blatantly lush throughout the album. In many ways, each songs feels like it could exist as a separate short story, thus making the album as a whole function as a full length non-linear novel detailing this love affair. Even so, what remains especially brilliant to me about the album's presentation is how Father John Misty continuously upended any expectations I may have been holding about each song from song to song. Once I felt that I had my bearings, Misty would pull the rug out from under me with another turn of a phrase, an unrepentant vulgarity, an ever increasingly disturbing dive into self-loathing, as if daring the listener, as well as Emma, to remain with him during his arduous inner journey.
"When You're Smiling And Astride Me," continues the album's romantically devotional mood complete with sexually hungry thematics and a confessional spirit that is filled with the grace if having been fully accepted by Emma. But by the album's next track and the fullness of the album's second half, Father John Misty plunges us into emotional darkness.
In "Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow," Misty wrestles with mounting loneliness and jealousy with real and/or imagined suitors pursuing Emma while he is away on a Fleet Foxes tour. The mournful sounding "Strange Encounter" details the aftermath of another empty sexual dalliance. And the striking, almost hymnal "Bored In The U.S.A.," itself a play off of Bruce Springsteen's classic, is a swan dive into Misty's existential crisis.
What does exist as a song of middle American malaise, a decreasing slice of life under the eyes of "President Jesus," this song actually functions stronger as an exploration of Misty's deepest fears of once being the love of Emma's life and now becoming her greatest mistake, and even her to himself. "Now, I've got a lifetime to consider all the ways/I've grown more disappointing to you," he begins. "As my beauty warps and fades/I suspect you feel the same." Then, in a disturbingly effective usage of studio wizardry, Misty then begins to gather a list of his self-perceived mounting failures, all punctuated by a harrowing laugh track after each line.
"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 U.S.A...
...How did it happen?"
Misty reaches a personal crossroads within the raw, hard rock howl of "The Ideal Husband" as he confronts himself for all of his mistakes and failures from the following:
"Every woman that I've slept with
Every friendship I've neglected
Didn't call when Grandma died
I spend my money getting drunk and high
I've done things unprotected
Proceeded to drive home wasted
Bought things to win over siblings
I've said awful things, such awful things"
And then, in a moment that for me (believe it or not) recalled the redemptive plea from Writer/Producer/Director Spike Lee's "Mo' Better Blues" (1990) where the philanderous trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) begs for forgiveness, love and marriage from schoolteacher Indigo Downes (Joie Lee), Misty presumably arrives at Emma's at 7 a.m., announces in a flurry...
"I said, 'Baby, I'm succumbing."
Said something dumb like 'I'm tired of running
Tired of running, tired of running
Let's put a baby in the oven
Wouldn't I make the ideal husband"
From here, Father John Misty continues and expands upon the themes contained in "Bored In The U.S.A." and the album's title track with the acoustic based "Holy Shit." Reportedly written on Misty's wedding day to Emma, the song is another litany of apocalyptic references of life in the 21st century, a litany that the twosome will share yet are somehow meaningless in regards to their love...even if that very love is a societal construct (something else Misty wrestles with philosophically and emotionally).
And finally, we reach the album's heart tugger if there ever was one, "I Went To The Store One Day," during which Misty recounts his first meeting with Emma, their present and then, their future as they part ways only in death. "Don't let me die in a hospital/I'll save the big one for the last time we make love/Insert here a sentiment re: our golden years/All 'cause I went to the store one day."
Father John Misty's "I Love You, Honeybear" is a labyrinthine exploration of love as it truly exists within its many facets, may of which are unpleasant a beast and anguishing at worst. In some ways, the album feels like a corridor of rooms in Misty's personal heartbreak hotel, a description that does indeed find itself superbly augmented by the wide canvas of the music, the agile depths of the lyrics and most certainly, Misty's always emotive vocals.
What amazes me most about the album is the fact that here is Josh Tillman, utilizing a pseudonym, is heavily adorned with a mane of black hair and a face nearly engulfed with a dark beard, has released an album of music so heavily produced that it is quite reminiscent of the "Wall Of Sound" tapestry Producer Phil Spector weaved on George Harrison's epic "All Things Must Pass" (released November 27, 1970). It is almost as if he is trying to hide himself within the music but in actuality, he is revealing to the point of public self-laceration. Just regard the presentation of the album artwork itself, from the fold out poster sized lyric sheet, the additional booklet which provides extensively written listening instructions for each song, and then the cover artwork itself, which features a collective of people all wearing masks, except for Misty himself--which does seem appropriate as he is laying himself completely bare across the entire listening experience.
"I Love You, Honeybear" is powerfully naked and one where the truth and heart of the matter is found completely within the artifice. And in doing so, Father John Misty has created an album that not only speaks of his relationship but of all relationships as we, especially in the 21st century as we live so much of our lives through social media, are always fashioning some level of a persona to attract others towards us, fearing that our very flawed real selves would drive everyone away, leaving us devastated and forever lonely. For all of the pain, confusion, torment, and turmoil, what spoke to me in addition to the aforementioned emotional messiness, what the assertion that true love occurs when someone accepts you regardless of your supposed flaws or sees the real you completely through the very artifice that you have created...and just loves you anyway.
As Misty sings at one point, "You see me as I am, it's true/ Aimless, fake drifter,and the horny manchild momma's boy to boot/That's how you live free/Truly see and be seen." For Father John Misty's "I Love You Honeybear," Mr. Tillman, you have been seen, heard and felt...outstandingly so.
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