Quick backstory: Father John Misty is Joshua Tillman an accomplished singer-songwriter who joined Fleet Foxes on drums in 2008 as they rose to indie stardom. The day job didn’t stop him from writing his own dad songs under the name J. Tillman but he only managed a modest following. After quitting tha Foxes he assumed a ludicrous cult-y-sounding moniker and signed to Sub Pop where — voila! — People started to give a damn and all his perseverance began to pay off.
Father John Misty’s 2012 debut Fear Fun earned him strong reviews and an even stronger following but damn has its successor ever showed it up. Described as a “concept album about Josh Tillman” I Love You Honeybear might sound lovey dovey and it has those moments but if anything Tillman impeccably celebrates and bemoans all of the mundane things in life we sigh about daily.
“Bored in the USA” which he gloriously performed on Letterman last November has him resentfully detailing all of his afflictions through a lush piano ballad that ascends with the help of strings — and laugh track. And on “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” he playfully scorns a woman who likely rejected his come-on with the biting lyric: “She says ‘like literally’ music is the air she breathes… / I wonder if she even knows what that word means/ Well it’s ‘literally’ not that.”
On Honeybear Tillman has become Harry Nilsson Rufus Wainwright and Louis C.K. packaged into one Fleet Foxes-looking dude. And although he might have been a true rock star had he been born 40 years earlier I think his talents in this cynical age are needed now more than ever.
