The Albums That Matter: I Love You, Honeybear

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE. This week, I'm breaking alphabetical order, in honor of Pam's birthday. I had her pick an album from my iPod to write about. Her choice should not be surprising.

I Love You, Honeybear

Father John Misty

2015

I have a lot to say about this album, and I've listened to it a million times. I can't decide whether I've heard it a lot because it presents a lot of ideas to talk about, or that I really only have a lot to talk about because I've listened to it a million times. It's possible that it's symbiotic and both are true.

In any case, it's an album that's extremely easy to write about in this column. It makes sense that Pam wants me to write about it (for reasons I'll expound upon much more in a bit), but I'm glad to do it regardless. There are great albums, and there are bad albums, and I can eke out a little bit about both. But it's the albums that fall in the middle, for complex and conflicting reasons, that are the most fun to work out in print. I've felt uncertain about confused about my opinions of I Love You, Honeybear for over a half of a decade at this point, and it's nice to just start typing and see what pops out (hopefully it doesn't turn out to be gibberish).

I want to start by backtracking to this column's previous entry, which was about Beatles for Sale. The interpretation of my love for that album boiled down to a character trait: I liked Beatles for Sale mostly because it is so unloved in the context of the Beatles canon. This was my appreciation of an underdog, because I'm built to root for the underdog. That's just who I am.

In many ways, I Love You, Honeybear is the opposite of Beatles for Sale. The latter is a scruffy forgotten mutt from the most popular band of all time. The former, today's album, is a very popular and well-loved album, but from a relatively unknown artist in a relatively niche genre.

I don't even want to argue that last point, actually, because that's not what's important here. He's not Top 40, is what I'm trying to say. FJM isn't the Beatles. I instead want to argue that, at least within that context, I Love You, Honeybear is very well-known. And, when it comes to my typical reaction of the popular, it's again the opposite of how I described myself last week. When I come into contact with something that is beloved, I am instantly skeptical. So when a bunch of people (my wife, et al) claim that this is the best album of 2010s, I'm immediately going to become suspicious of that claim.

That's just how I am, and I've always been. This is an annoying character trait, for sure. Just like I have the ability to look at something that is critically unloved and see the good in it, I also have the inability to see something that is fashionable or trendy and find those same positives. I have trouble admitting that there are occasions when sometimes the hoi polloi is correct, this thing or this song or this person really is good and worthy.

So there's that. Everyone claimed that Father John Misty was a revelation when this album dropped, but what would've been a pretty good album in my mind, instantly became divisive simply due to its popularity and critical acclaim. I get it. This is a shitty way to live.

And you know I get it because I've sat there silently during a thousand car rides, listening to I Love Honeybear, not complaining, not asking to turn it off. Not only is that me holding back on my worst impulses, but that's also a tacit admission that ILYH truly is a good album.

I mean, this fucker is packed full with tunes, and they run the gamut of styles and levels of excitement and intrigue. There's the primal scream of "The Ideal Husband," the loose jazz and the tightly-wound paranoia of "Nothing Good Ever Happens at the Goddamn Thirsty Crow," the jocular verbal beatdown of "The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment," the world-weary strum of "Holy Shit," the campfire love song of "Chateau #4," this list goes on, folks. Sometimes a good cigar really is a good cigar, even if the blogosphere is claiming that it's the BEST CIGAR EVER.

But now consider the fact that it's seemed like so often that Josh Tillman doesn't even want you to like him. Note that Josh Tillman isn't listed as the author of these songs, but rather Father John Misty, his alter ego. Like a shy actor putting on the mask and cape and becoming a different person all together, Tillman dons the persona, and feels like he can escape and be someone else. The only problem is, when you're a musical artist, the fourth wall is constantly broken, and the mask isn't as protective as you'd originally hoped.

Father John Misty, still on tour promoting this album, tried to ruin the local XPN Festival by incoherently lecturing the fans about entertainment being stupid, hate running the world, etc. These were fans that paid money to see him sing "Strange Encounter," not have their integrity questioned. That kind of shit used to happen all the time in the wake of I Love You, Honeybear. He was artist who created this raw and honest and in many ways capital-R Romantic album and yet spent a lot of the time being kind of an asshole. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and that affects my appreciation for the album and the shit he was trying to say on it. You can't preach the there's love to be found in this crazy world, and then spend ALL your time talking about the crazy world, completely ignoring the love aspect of it.

But that's all forgetting that Father John Misty is ostensibly a character. He is a figment of Tillman's imagination. He doesn't exist. Maybe? Right? I dunno, I guess I'm still a little skeptical. It's like the argument about drunks—can you wave away their (our) shitty actions because they were drunk at the time, or do their true selves come out because of the alcohol? Is "Father John Misty" a mirage created by a fear of the self, or is it simply a manifestation of the self?

I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Plus, you gotta remember that my obsessing over what's true and what's fake might just be another defense mechanism against the "popular." Like, okay, what the fuck does it matter whether Father John Misty is an outlet for bad impulses or truly who Josh Tillman is? Why should that affect my feelings about I Love You, Honeybear? Shouldn't we just kill the author to simplify things a little bit?

But if the author is dead and we are just looking at the subject matter on the album itself, then I still run into a bit of a snag, in terms of my appreciation or lack thereof. My thoughts in this realm can be summed up by the following tweet summing up ILYH's general theme:

There are songs about falling in love with your wife, which I usually appreciate, and there are songs about making fun of a random chick for being into astrology and then choking her during sex, which I find brutally and hilariously enjoyable. But to smash both those conflicting themes together and call it a "concept album" has never really sat right with me. (Yet again, I could be saying this because I'm looking for a reason to denigrate, but let's assume that I'm not for a second.)

Like, Pam will always say that her favorite parts of the album are the lovey-dovey sections, which truly are fucking great. The final song, "I Went to the Store One Day," is an amazingly heartfelt account of the day Tillman met his wife, and all the future days thereafter. It's almost perfect. I've seen Pam literally choke up listening to this song. And I get it! That makes sense! But what doesn't make sense to me is that is that this song can exist in the same LP as a song about how fucked America is, or getting into a bar fight.

I had a revelation today, about why this doesn't sit well with me. I've literally never thought about this before starting to type all this out. Maybe, just maybe, the reason I'm so uncomfortable with Tillman's excruciating accounting of his flaws butting up against the full-heart love songs is that this is a reflection of what I do personally, too, to maybe an annoying degree. Right here on this blog, all the time.

Let's put it this way. I could see myself finishing up a lovesick post about how beautiful Pam is and how lucky I am to have her in my life, and then the very next day blogging about a hicky I received from a blackout chick in junior year or some shit like that. And I can imagine the whiplash that Pam would feel, having to read both of those entries in the same week, how uncomfortable that might make her. But you could see me doing that, right? That'd I'd be the type of person to do that?

Maybe the reason I hold FJM at a distance is that I see myself in him, and I am ultimately uncomfortable with myself. Like, I know what it's like to fuck up, and I hear him sing about these horrifically embarrassing situations, and I know what that feels like, and I don't necessarily want to feel that way, even by proxy. I see a buffoonish cartoon of a man lecturing an innocent crowd about all the hate in the world, but I have also been that buffoon before too, and it doesn't feel good.

Conversely... maybe Pam likes this album so much is that she sees some of me in Father John Misty too. That might be a stretch? It's probably a stretch. But it's the best explanation I have. It's a messy album about how love is messy, and Pam is married to me, so she knows that better than anyone. Maybe the album speaks to her in ways I've dismissed until today.

Ugh, but now I'm making it all about me, and that's a total Josh Tillman move. I'm out.


If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "The Ideal Husband"

Stray Observations

• That incident at XPN Fest pops up a couple albums later, on God's Favorite Customer's "Mr. Tillman." Check it: "And, oh, will you need a driver out to Philly? / Jason Isbell's here as well and he seemed a little worried about you." There's really no surprise, based on everything I wrote above, that my favorite FJM album is the one where the facade finally starts to crumble.
• If we're talking follow-ups, let's talk about how the ILYH follow-up Pure Comedy takes the themes explored in this one's "Bored in the U.S.A." and "Holy Shit" and expounds on them ad literal nauseum. Seriously, those are two fine songs, but I don't need to hear 75 fucking minutes of them. Pure Comedy sucks.
• If we're talking things that suck, then I'll tell you that Pam and I both agree that "True Affection" is the worst song on I Love You, Honeybear. FJM can wear many garbs well, but electronica is apparently not one of them.
• I've already explained a couple times I didn't particularly have a good time at the Misty concert we attended in the Spring of 2016, but it's interesting that the reasons I felt negatively about that are not exactly the same as the negative feelings I occasionally feel toward ILYH. Sometimes a concert is bad simply because an artist makes no effort to make it fun, no hand-wringing about fake personas required.
• There are a myriad of fun and clever lyrics littered all over this motherfucker. My favorite is the crack about malapropisms in "The Night That..."
• Second place is the one quoted in many of the reviews at the time: "Insert here: / A sentiment re: our golden years." So good.
• ALBUM COVER: Here's the artist who created the front cover and the interior artwork. I've never given a thought before as to what the cover means, and the artist doesn't expound, so let's hypothesize: FJM, emotionally infantile, finds protection, from a crazy world filled with figurative demons and snakes, in the arms of a lover.
• ALBUM NAME: I'm not going to waste too much time trying to find out for certain, but I have to assume that "Honeybear" is a cutesy nickname for his wife, right?
• CHARTS: I Love You, Honeybear peaked at #17, which is better than I expected! Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late was #1. I have never listened to that one, but I'm not going to complain like I usually do (I'm still giving Drake a break from criticisms due to his work on that Canadian soap opera all those years ago). It charted at #7 on PoYB's Top Albums of 2015, and "The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment" got an honorable mention for Best Songs.
• AWARDS: It was nominated for a Grammy for Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package (see the link under ALBUM NAME). It lost. It had nothing to do with the music, so who cares?
• I remember Pam pointing out the significance of the "Chateau #4" line "I haven’t hated / All the same things as somebody else / Since I remember," in the context of our relationship, and how much we could relate to that. It's true! Me and Pam really do hate the same things! We should really watch High Fidelity soon, a movie that takes that concept and questions its validity.
• Johnathan Wilson co-produced the album with Tillman. I completely forgot about this dude until I read the Wikipedia page for the album today. He had an album that I listened to a couple times a few years ago. It was called Rare Birds. It was very much a Father John Misty-sounding album, so if that's your bag, check it out.
• So that concert we went to in 2016 was attended by me, Pam, my sister Brianna, and her boyfriend at the time. My sister Jenn and my brother-in-law Bob are not into this type of music, so they didn't go, but we were chilling with them earlier in the day. Bob, at one point, asked us about it, and said, "Aren't you going to see a concert tonight? Jamie the Preacher Man or something?" Ever since, a K*** inside joke has been calling Father John Misty "Jamie the Preacher Man."

NEXT TIME: Before Today by Ariel Pink (back to the alphabetical grind)