Father John Misty

Tom: Where do I start?

Where do I start?

I feel like a teenager because grown adults shouldn't be infatuated with a musician to this degree. It rivals the days when I wrote 'pro-choice' on my arm in magic marker just like Eddie Vedder or thought Dave Matthews was a genius because just about every one of his songs was about carpe diem. Back in those days I not only liked the music I loved their aura of coolness (as juvenile as that sounds). I wanted to BE those musicians. I watched all their videos, I read all their interviews and I even bought their fucking biographies.

Today I'm a lot more comfortable with myself and comfortable with the life I made and feel I should be above that shit. After all, we're all just people, right? Yet, I find myself looking up to Josh Tillamn (aka Father John Misty) with googley eyes in moist undergarments.

We'll get to his music in a second, but the man is so fucking intriguing to me. Everything he says and does I find absolutely hilarious and/or interesting. Whether it's pre-relesing his album to stream, but in midi form, or him re-enacting a Sammy Davis Junior bit on youtube, OR performing inside of a giant cardboard iphone frame (because people seem to rather watch his live shows through a smart phone...DUH).

Most importantly like anybody, he has something to say, but it sounds more meaningful because he says/sings it in such a creative and interesting way. It ooooozes sarcasm, emotion and confidence all at the same time.

Father John Misty walks with a swagger that naturally makes his dick swing like a lasso. The girls want him and the boys want to be him (and some may want him too). Joel, do you want to be Josh or do you want to have him....in your mouth?

Joel: I have yet to determine where I would place him, whether in me or on me, but I am sort of in the same boat. I haven't been this infatuated with an individual male human being since I got heavily involved in gambling in college and ended up having to bet on international soccer to pay back my bookie each week and a guy named Cafu became my fucking hero.

But where Cafu was actually saving my ass from cement shoes, I sort of feel like Father John Misty saved me from losing that one piece of me that sort of makes me me. I NEED someone to root for, to look out for, to obsess over. And at the moment when I finally took a listen to what Tom and Tim had been telling me for over a year, I was obsess-less. Every band or artist I loved didn't interest me at the moment and my life seemed too "serious" for the first time in my life. For fuck's sake, I was a fucking elected official now. EW! I DISGUSTED EVEN MYSELF BRO.

My gradual introduction into the persona of Josh Tillman and the music of Father John Misty took me from a casual interest to a 'hard to admit to other adult humans' obsession. Along with another of my friends who had never heard him, we went from knowing nothing to NEEDING to fucking know what color the guy's shit was before it hit the toilet water, the music was only a vehicle for our collective mancrush to travel that distance.

Josh Tillman is fucking fascinating in every sense of the word. Every song lyric (after I understand it) is brilliant, and somehow about how much of a fucking asshole consumer I am, or about how shitty the women I dated before meeting my wife were. This motherfucker doesn't just speak to me, he speaks for me. Every antic seems calculated. Every sip of snark I take from the motherfucking Misty carafe makes me fucking happy as shit.

I want this man to adopt me, and then tell me every thing I've been taught is a lie and that it's completely okay to like the feeling of women's underwear when wrapped around my manhood like a barber's pole, yet 66% more buoyant.

Father John Misty completes a part of my life I wasn't aware was incomplete.

Tom: It seems as if we are on the page Jerry McGuire. Let's talk about the music.

For those of you who don't know; let me learn you on some quick background info on our bearded Jesus. Father John Misty is Josh Tillman. Up until 2 years ago he was better known as the drummer in Fleet Foxes who occasionally released solo projects under J. Tillman. Father John Misty is just a moniker that he began a couple of years ago when he released Fear Fun.

The 'identities' may sound confusing, but it shouldn't be....it's just him. However, the music released under FJM seemed to go in a different direction. The songs are written with no fear; they are blunt and sarcastic and completely personal. He's stated numerous times that when it comes to music he's not into fiction. And when I'm listening to Fear Fun I feel like I know the man personally....like we've been BFF's for years and we have a secret high five that is 10 moves deep and ends with a hip shimmy.

It's like he decided he had something to say and created a sound around that. Nowadays, I think many musicians do the opposite: they try to first fit into a certain genre and adapt their lyrics for said genre. Whether it's hippy folk...so the common lyrical theme is about nature or fucking on a bear-skin rug aside a campfire. Or shoegaze with lyrics about deep dark oceans and the tides being pulled by the moon or some shit. Sure these themes can be auto-biographical in nature if they are clever with metaphors, but it's expected and doesn't feel genuine. I don't want to be BFF's with these assholes because they're not interesting. I don't want to give them a high five.

...maybe a fist bump if they're cute.

It's mainly this reason why Fear Fun is probably my favorite album released this century. Tillman talks about shit that's been talked about before, but he does it in a beautifully snarky way that is unexpected. I don't know how it works, but it does. The humor and sarcasm isn't used as a smoke screen to hide behind and doesn't feel self deprecating. It's confident, but not arrogant. It's him, bro.

With that said, his new album I Love You Honeybear carries over all the shit that I love about Fear Fun, but sounds completely different. And....BOLD STATEMENT ALERT...it is JUST AS GOOD AS FEAR FUN.

Joel: Yeah, comparing the I Love You Honeybear and Fear Fun is a bit difficult for me, because while they feel related in a sense that they're both out of the same brain and mouth hole, they're part of the same book that I refuse to put down, they're just different chapters. Fear Fun had a sense of whimsy, like dude was sketching what he imagined his life was really like, but Honeybear feels like some serious "I learned how to fucking draw bro, and I'm using mad watercolors" and now his songs are so fucking real it's almost depressing in how real the shit feels.

Father John Misty has that snark, as previously mentioned, but the delivery on Honeybear feels so much more necessary than on Fear Fun. And while I know if the gawd ever gets around to reading his own reviews he will insist that none of that is even possible and we're all analyzing shit just to feel self-important, but fuck him (AND HOW), Tillman is the only artist I'm interested in outside of their music right now. So I will continue to analyze his anals as long as I have the lyzes to do so.

Honeybear has all of these really sarcastic lyrics, but there are at least three spots on the album where dude is just completely fucking vulnerable. That vulnerability is what is killing me right now, because nothing else is hitting me like this. I'm enjoying both the musical nature of the fucking album, but even with out all that, it's just him. Dude is fucking fascinating.

Tom: Bro. I love the vulnerability too. And I love the cynicism.....especially on "Bored in The USA" and "Holy Shit". Those tracks are so depressing that it is funny, and then you get even more depressed because you found the depressing shit amusing in the first place. Maybe this is why I find laugh track on "Bored In The USA" so brilliant.

And the overall structure on "Holy Shit" is amazing: it's just one rant-like verse that continues through out the entire song. The only break from that verse comes with a swirl of the strings and an up in key (and intensity)....AND that subtle break is BRILLZ because it's like FJM is taking a giant breath so he can finish said rant and extend his middle finger to everything that's fucked-up and accepted by our culture.

After I listen to these songs that come back to back on the album, I'm frozen in astonishment when I realize how much he just said on 2 tracks. It's not like listening to your drunk uncle babbling on about shit; it's like listening to your drunk uncle babbling on about shit while on weed. Everything is so clear, it's comprehended perfectly.

At least to me it is.

Joel: "The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment" is that way for me. It's the perfect Father John Misty song.

Dude is so fucking disgusted with the woman he's describing in the song it's almost like you can taste his disdain:

She says, “Like, literally music is the air [she] breathe[s]”
And the malaprops make me wanna fucking scream
I wonder if she even knows what that word means
Well, it’s “literally” not that

The woman he's painting the picture of is that chick we all can't stand, but sort of have to put up with. The girl who is the center of her own world and makes the "sttk" sound with her tongue when you don't realize you're just a dumb fucking planet revolving around her own existence. I can't stand these broads either, and I dated a few in college, and his words fit perfectly into the memories of their complete and utter immaturity that you somehow can't call them out on without ruining the relationship (and the potential for them to touch your genitals again) completely.

The part towards the end where he says he "hates that soulful affectation white girls put on, why don't you move to the Delta" is fucking amazingly perfect. While I don't understand why she was in the bath with her best friend who was a dude who was singing a Christmas song, holy shit, having experienced a part of my life in the "arts", white girls fucking SUCK. THANK THE FATHER FOR SUCH CLARITY AND AMAZEBALLNESS ON THIS.

I think the track I'm in love with the most now (besides "True Affection": Fuck all of you who don't like that shit, you're just jealous FJM can drop that electro beard on your shoulder from behind and look down while you jack off and you're uncomfortable with being so comfortable bro.) is "Strange Encounter". Holy shit does dude drop the vibe on this one.

The entire song feels like the overdose scene from Pulp Fiction, to the fucking letter. The first time I heard this song I was clenching my fists and screaming to the heavens "PLEASE BE A DIRTY GUITAR SOLO!" and holy balls, there is. But the first few times I mentioned it to friends they had no idea what I was talking about. "There's no guitar solo on that song." BUT BRO THO, the guitar solo on this song is so dirty, yet so smooth and lubed, you don't even realize it's inside of you until it's about ready to explode. It's the perfect accent to the most amazing visual of panic I've ever listened to. The song makes my fucking skin crawl, and it's beautiful.

Tom: ...And then there is "Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow" which makes me second guess everything we just wrote about the man. Can all our flattery boners be a curse to him in some weird ironic way? He sings: "Why the long face, Blondie? I’m already taken – sorry. I may act like a lunatic, but if you think I’m fucking crazy, you’re mistaken. Keep moving." Does he feel misunderstood by the idea people have of him after releasing Fear Fun? Is his blunt lyricism a blessing and a burden?

I'm sure to some level it is. It can't be normal to have complete strangers (fanboys like myself) come up to him with preconceived notions on how he will behave and act. Whether it's a hot blonde who expects to get in his pants because she heard 'Nancy From Now On' or a fanboy requesting to get naked with him and smoke pot in a tree because they read he once did this once in some interview on Pitchfork.

Regardless, he seems to have set the record straight (at least with the blondes) on Honeybear with the first and title track. Sorry ladies and Joel, Josh Tillman is taken. He is madly in love with his wife Emma who he sings so affectionally about throughout the album. And by affectionally I mean a perfect combination of sweet and raunchy. The raunchy greets you right off the bat:

Oh, Honeybear, Honeybear, Honeybear
Mascara, blood, ash and cum
On the Rorschach sheets where we make love

But he can also be so fucking sweet. Like on the 2nd track, Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins):

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” and I haven’t left your bed since

AND while I'm sure we can talk his lyrics to death (they are that good), I need to give two testicles up to the overall sound on Honeybear because it has evolved too. I fucking LOVE all the strings and the horns that make their way on to tracks. From a composition standpoint "When You're Smiling and Astride Me" might be the best track he's ever written. That whole WHOAOHOHOH WHOA into is some real 'wall of sound' shit. And the fucking George Harrison-eque guitar turns me into an boneless blob and I'm melting into the ground. THIS TRACK ENCOMPASSES EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT MUSIC. I'd seriously listen to it on an endless loop if the other songs on the album weren't so great.

Joel: Agreed on all fronts (and backsides bro).

The fact that Father John Misty is this generation's Neil Diamond meets Riff Raff all put together with one amazingly delicious svelte frame is probably lost on all of those people afraid of letting their guards (and potentially, their pants) down because the music is almost disguised as a joke.

While I can't always know whether or not I should be taking him serious or assuming he's fucking with me, I do know that I value just fucking knowing about him in general. I see him as the smudged mirror I masturbate in front of, where I'm both grossed out by my own disgusting immaturity, yet strangely turned on at what the mirror is reflecting back at me.

Does that confession make me look fat?

Ten stars. Two balls. Perfect album.

Tom: That's it?

11 stars.

I don't even feel worthy enough to review this album.