10 years ago today: Father John Misty released I Love You, Honeybear

Originally published in Hot Press in February 2015:

Album Review: Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

By turns acerbic, romantic, fragile and raging, the second album by Josh Tillman since his departure from Fleet Foxes is an absolute cracker.

The Maryland native has been recording music in various guises for the last 11 years, most of them spent in Seattle hanging around with his mate, Damien Jurado. He joined Fleet Foxes as their drummer in 2008, spending four years behind the kit as the choral folkies toured the world, before hanging up his sticks in January 2012.

Four months later, Tillman released his first album as Father John Misty and a new musical chapter was born. Fear Fun was well-received critically but in terms of quality, it really only hinted at the motherlode that was coming down the tracks in the shape of I Love You, Honeybear.

Musically, Tillman’s sophomore effort veers from ‘70s-inspired MOR (‘Holy Shit’) to orchestral pop (‘Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins))’, with a nod to folk, a galloping blast of raucous rock (‘The Ideal Husband’) and even a hint of gentle electronica (‘True Affection’) along the way, all admirably held in check by the production talents of fellow musical maverick Jonathan Wilson.

Arrangements aside, it’s Tillman’s worthy wordsmithery which will really win you over, combining the razor-sharp wit of Randy Newman and the acid put-downs of John Grant with the sincerity of both of those superb writers. Like Grant at his best, Tillman often marries the most searing words to the sweetest melodies to devastating effect.

The title track initially comes across so warm and fuzzy, it could be sponsored by Hallmark, but it stops short of being mawkish thanks to Tillman’s wry honesty and his waspish sense of humour.

His reference to ‘malaprops’ in the scathing ‘The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt.’ is probably the first pop song ever to reference Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy, The Rivals, where the Mrs Malaprop character regularly mixed up her words. This is as barbed as songwriting gets, with Tillman spitting out a full-on character assassination in musical form: “I just love the kind of woman who can walk over a man... like a goddamn marching band.”

The old time country waltz of ‘Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow’ sees Tillman bitterly turning down would-be suitors at a bar (“Why the long-face blondie? I’m already taken”), while the honky-tonk cacophony of ‘The Ideal Husband’ has our anti-hero listing all the reasons why he’s about as far from the perfect partner as is humanly possible, before suggesting that procreation should be on the table.

Despite its cringe-inducing title, ‘When You’re Smiling And Astride Me’ is actually a genuinely affecting love song, but Tillman, like the true showman he is, leaves the best to last with the triple whammy of ‘Bored In The USA’, ‘Holy Shit’ and ‘I Went To The Store One Day’.

The former is far more than a pun on Springsteen’s anthem; it’s depressingly bleak and devastating, even down to Tillman’s highly effective use of canned laughter, as he narrates the myriad failures that make up a life: “I’ve got a lifetime to consider all the ways I’ve grown more disappointing to you as my beauty warps and fades.”

‘Holy Shit’ is a state-of-his-nation address that’s harrowing but heartfelt, and the closing ‘Went To The Store’ is an affectingly honest love song, apparently telling the true-ish story of how he met his wife, fell in love and then let the jealousy and paranoia in too.

A devilishly difficult and delicious second album.