Album Review: I love You, Honeybear

Joshua Tillman, former member of band Fleet Foxes, released I Love You, Honeybear under moniker Father John Misty. Misty, gives the listener an inside perspective to his raw, bare bone emotions and almost ruthlessly honest approach to life. Not only is Honeybear introspective, its peppered with a dark humor giving it the down to earth realism that characterizes the folk genre. This album is what makes Father John Misty so classically folk due to his use of simple acoustic rhythms to convey his innermost and honest thoughts and feelings.

(Photo: Emma Elizabeth Tillman)

He debuted his single, "Bored in the USA", featured on Honeybear, in late 2014. This slow piano ballad with built in laugh track is truthful to the point of disheartening. It begs the listener to question the lifestyle of the typical American. He opens up the slow song by saying, "How many people rise and say/My brain's so awfully glad to be here for yet another/mindless day". The dark tone of the song is accentuated by a humor just as charged. Misty writes, "Save me President Jesus" making a humorous jab at US politics and religion. Under the piano, Misty makes sure to play the aforementioned laugh track at the end of each of his clever lines, because that's just the American way. 

While the rest of the 11 tracks on the album are not as openly humorous as Bored in the USA, which it's title in itself is a pun, they take an equally deep introspective approach on life. Father John Misty uses song "Holy Shit" to soliloquize his discontent with what he sees around him. In this song, Misty lays it all on the table from topics of genocide to gender-roles, but ends the song with an uplifting note saying, "But our fantasy is what that's gotta do with you and me." To Misty, the life outside has no power over the love within.

This album, despite its dark lyrics and cynicisms,  is about love. In his song "When You're Smiling and Astride Me" he describes the love he has found and his amazement at it. In it, he says, "That's how you live free/Truly see and be seen" after describing a rather unflattering picture of himself. With those lines, he summarizes why he takes such a truthful approach to his life and love. 

His love song, "Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for two Virgins)", another single, paints a picture of a new type of love, foreign to him. He dedicates his love to Emma, who he married in 2014 while writing this album, and we see songs to her throughout. The album is a story unfolding about this new love and he takes it back to the beginning, at the end with "I Went to the Store One Day" with a thoughtful account of parking lot serendipity.

The title song, responds to all of his criticisms and leaves you to think about the role love plays within life. Suitingly this song summarizes the love above all message vocalized through the entire album. Misty ends the song by saying,

"But everything is fine / Don't give into despair / Cause I love you, honeybear"

This album is a beautiful work of art. It is a magnificent display of Tillman's genius lyrics. This album needs to be ingested in full. Tillman possess an amazing ability to make an album, as a whole, the focus of his release rather than giving special rise to certain songs. It is a rarity to find an album with such unity that gives credit to individual songs while also making them work for the big picture. I love you, Honeybear is and A+ album worthy of many listens and guaranteed to deliver something new everytime.