Father John Misty: I Love You, Honeybear (Bella Union)
Formerly the drummer in Seattle band Fleet Foxes, Josh Tillman has since returned to his previous incarnation as a spinner of witty, oddball confessionals about sex and love. Some of these concern a certain J Tillman, a semi-fictionalised version of himself. Since 2012's Fear Fun, however, he has recorded as Father John Misty.
Tillman-as-character appears again here though, in a track titled The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment. It climaxes in the winning image of Tillman, his girlfriend and her best friend (gender not specified) naked in a bath singing three-part harmonies and trying to sound like Sarah Vaughan, a choral exertion which brings from him the acid rejoinder: "I hate that soulful affectation white girls put on".
As on the rest of I Love Your, Honeybear, the barbed lyrics are mostly sung sweetly over lush, tuneful orchestration, pushing Tillman towards Randy Newman territory. When he opts for a musical close-up instead, he accompanies himself with an acoustic guitar, as on Holy Shit. As a result, it's probably the bleakest song on the album. Tillman is sometimes a little too clever for his own good, but you can't not applaud the compositional brio he displays throughout. May his poison pen never run dry of ink.
Barry Didcock
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