Take a Seat, the Preacher’s Just Begun:
A review of Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear
By Steve Knapp
I Love You, Honeybear, is Father John Misty’s (Josh Tillman’s) seemingly autobiographical follow up to 2012’s Fear Fun. In short, it’s an album located at the crossroads of self-destruction, love, and transformation; a concept album emphasizing the emotions that come along with finding that one special person you can love and evolve with all while watching the world burn around you.
As soon as you press the play button, velvet curtains roll back to reveal a vaudeville tell-all that screams more as a hidden whisper confessional than a bombastic spew of self-righteousness. The album’s a one-man show aiming for an audience willing to do a little soul searching.
It begins with a declaration of a title track that eases you into the album experience with as much care as it has enthusiasm. From there, you’ll discover a healthy mix of lo-fi and retro recording sensibilities interspersed throughout modern compositional cleanliness. However, I found the track True Affection to be a bit of a roadblock on a smooth highway of solid pacing. While strong in its own right, this electrically dominated piece comes across as more of a grasp at diversity than a necessary break in the album’s overall feel. But like I said, it is still a very strong song and does not affect the album experience overall.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6NuYJ0RzRg[/youtube]From there we experience well thought out orchestrated twists and turns through various genre-tinged scores. The Ideal Husband sticks out mind as the strongest example of the album’s ability to meld musical sensibilities in order to create a beautiful amalgam of vocals and instruments. It thunders along with a pulsating organ right out of the classic pop hits of the 50s and 60s and yet avoids the realm of the gimmicky. It emboldens the lines straddled throughout the LP and solidifies the melodies as something earned, not bought through familiarity or nostalgia.
The final track acts as a sort of call back to Fear Fun. While it fits in with the new aesthetic, it also breathes in a more understated space, utilizing light strings to highlight a beautifully open folk ballad. It’s the final kiss at the end of the album’s secretive whisper: subtle, no tongue, and just enough to leave you with your thoughts, knowing that what you experienced was something special.
What puts this album over the top for me is its unapologetic love for music as a whole and its infatuation with uncompromising prose. Influences ranging from Motown strings and electronic beats to music boxes and Bollywood overtones dance their way through these songwriter anthems, featuring lyrical poetry worthy of the most stringent literary journals. It’s like leading an ostentatious circus procession right through the middle of Main Street, USA: nothing fits and yet all’s accepted. With every new bite of originality expecting to promptly be swallowed, you’ll receive a little help from familiar sounds and poignant metaphor, making the overall bite palatable and establishing a craving almost instantly.
I Love You, Honeybear vibes perfectly with its creator: It’s hauntingly spacious. It’s inclusively eclectic. It’s nothing you would have expected but everything you wanted—another rebirth in the right direction. Give it a listen and then listen again; it’s going to take a long time to digest it all.
Tillman certainly summarizes the experience best: “I am truly singing my ass off all over this motherf*cker.”
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