If you are looking for a gift for Valentine’s Day, the 10th-anniversary edition of Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear arrives February 14 on red vinyl.
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The 2015 album from Father John Misty, born Joshua Tillman, details his life and relationship with his wife Emma, a filmmaker and photographer, whom he married in 2013. It was his second album since leaving Fleet Foxes. (He played drums for the Seattle band from 2008 to 2012.)
The Ideal Husband
The folk singer explained the album’s plot as a story of personal evolution. “I Love You, Honeybear is a concept album about a guy named Josh Tillman who spends quite a bit of time banging his head against walls, cultivating weak ties with strangers, and generally avoiding intimacy at all costs. This all serves to fuel a version of himself that his self-loathing narcissism can deal with. We see him engaging in all manner of regrettable behavior,” he said.
Also, his ambition for the album “was to address the sensuality of fear, the terrifying force of love, the utterable pleasures of true intimacy, and the destruction of emotional and intellectual prisons in my own voice.”
On I Love You, Honeybear, Tillman exposes a hard cynicism. It leads one to believe this character might never fall in love. However, a romantic slowly reveals himself and does so across 45 beautiful minutes.
The album chronicles how his romance with Emma eventually transformed into a marriage. It ends tenderly with “I Went to the Store One Day.” Tillman condenses the arc of his relationship—from the day they met to a future of old age and death. But the final track is also amplified by sudden changes. Intimate and delicate fingerpicking, orchestral swells, and falsetto. These moves echo the unpredictable tides of a long relationship.
A chance encounter at the store, in a parking lot, a man drowning in narcissism finds the love of his life.
Demos and a Nirvana Cover
Keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme, the new edition also features a digital collection of demos and includes Tillman’s take on “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana, which he recorded for SiriusXM.
Last year, Tillman released Mahashmashana, his sixth album as Father John Misty. You can catch him on tour in North America beginning February 12 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Emma eats bread and butter
Like a queen would have ostrich and cobra wine
We’ll have satanic Christmas Eve
And play piano in the Château lobby
Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images
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