And now, an NTSIB Thanksgiving tradition: an extended session from one of our favorite artists. This year it is almost a full hour of one of the finest folk balladeers / shit-stirrers / magnificent trolls working today: Father John Misty, recorded live at KEXP in the summer of 2015. The songs are all from his latest, I Love You, Honeybear.
Happy Thanksgiving/Thursday, NTSIBberss.
Father John Misty (Josh Tillman), formerly of Fleet Foxes, started his solo career two years ago with Fear Fun. With it he positioned himself as a kind of post-modern Hunter S. Thompson, writing a doomed love story while high on mushrooms, self-loathing and irony. He publicly mocked critics who panned it, and audiences at his shows were often left wondering whether they were in on the joke, or just the punchline.
I liked it – I still do – but I also once described it as “Pavarotti singing nursery rhymes.”
Now, after a period of reflection and reconstruction – he put out a perfume, came unscrewed, got married, and pulled himself together, more or less in that order – he’s back with his second record, to be called I Love You, Honeybear, due out in February 2015.
Exterior signs suggest his puckish nature is undimmed at the core; the link text for his tour schedule is “I’m Coming to Your Town/Bring Your iPhone” and his Twitter reads like horse_ebooks:
Your Mom really was awesome if she packed Gushers in your lunchbox. Don't forget to send good luck messages to your favorite Olympians!
— AIKIKO – FJM (@fatherjohnmisty) January 22, 2014
Bored In the USA is the first single, and as the title suggests, is intended to echo Springsteen’s Born In the USA while also updating it for the modern era. The version below is from his appearance on Letterman, and so has a laugh track, which is accidental but nonetheless perfect.
http://youtu.be/hIFrG_6fySg
A full year of rock ‘n’ roll pictures, January to December, New York to Boston to Philadelphia to Brooklyn. They might not be the best pictures ever, but they are mine.
Johnny Hallyday, Beacon Theater, Oct. 7, 2012
Blake Mills, Terminal 5, New York, NY, Oct. 16, 2012
Fiona Apple, Terminal 5, New York, NY, 0ct. 16, 2012
Fiona Apple, Terminal 5, Oct. 16, 2012
Beast Patrol, The Studio at Webster Hall, October 19, 2012
Alex Greenwald and Z Berg, JJAMZ, The Studio at Webster Hall, Oct. 19, 2012
Alex Greenwald and Michael Runion, JJAMZ, The Studio at Webster Hall, Oct. 19, 2012
Sweatheart, Terminal 5, New York, NY, Oct. 22, 2012
The Dirty Pearls, Terminal 5, New York, NY, Oct. 22, 2012.
Justin Hawkins / The Darkness, Terminal 5, New York, NY, Oct. 22, 2012
Jeffertitti’s Nile w/ Father John Misty, Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY, Oct. 24, 2012
Katy Goodman, La Sera, Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY, Oct. 24, 2012
Father John Misty, w/ Jeffertitti, Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY, Oct. 24, 2012
Lindi Ortega, Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY, Oct. 26, 2012
Mike Ness, Social Distortion, Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY, Oct. 26, 2012
Apparently I didn’t go to any shows in November, either.
Sheena Ozzella, Lemuria, Webster Hall, New York, NY, Dec. 2, 2012
Ceremony and stage diver going in to the pit, Webster Hall, New York, NY, Dec. 2, 2012
Titus Andronicus, Webster Hall, New York, NY, Dec. 2, 2012
Animal Collective, Terminal 5, Dec. 5, 2012
Casey Neill, 68 Jay Street Bar, Brooklyn, NY, Dec. 8, 2012
A small fraction – there are nine of them! – of Industries of the Blind, Knitting Factory, Brooklyn, NY, Dec. 21, 2012
My post-show summary of Jeffertitti’s Nile was that they were loud and swirly, but pretty, and on reflection I think that sums them up pretty well. Their songs were almost entirely instrumental, and, were, well, psychadelic kaledeiscopes of notes. And yes, that is Father John Misty you see perched behind their drums; he was sitting in with them for the tour.
The second opener was La Sera. They started out kind of sweet and twee and then somewhere around song two or three abruptly kicked into gear, sprouted some harder edges and jumped several notches on my approval matrix. They also got bonus points for a partial cover / interpolation of an Elvis Presley song, because there really should be more punk/rockabilly Elvis covers.
And then Father John Misty (J. Tillman) re-appeared, having apparently briefly decamped to Tom Petty Fest and found it wanting. Here’s what I’m going to tell you about his set: what you hear on the record is what you hear live.
He did some jazz-hands and a lot of shimmy-shake and hit all of those notes in achingly beautiful style, with occasional breaks for snarking on the Tom Petty Fest and other miscellaneous rambling. It was obnoxious and beautiful and hilarious and I can’t wait to do it again at Webster Hall when he comes back in January.
Other notes: Jeffertitti Moon returned the sitting-in favor and played guitar during Tillman’s set.
Fear Fun, by Father John Misty (aka J. Tillman) is: the soundtrack for an adventure. Not the twee hipster kind either; to paraphrase NTSIB-friend Cam Rogers, this is music for the bad ideas that will end in bruises.
Or possibly with In-and-Out fries, consumed slowly while perched on the hood of a van, watching the sun rise at Venice Beach.
Or maybe with bruises and fries.
Fear Fun is also: a record I want to share with everyone, because, seriously, y’all need to listen to this, and a novel that I find myself circling back to, just to see how the characters are doing.
If it actually was a book, it would be one that I would I know if I lent it out I’d never get it back. It would also be one that I would deliberately lend to people who needed it. And then once they had finished it we could go down to the beach and eat our fries, drink fizzy drinks, wash our cuts and scrapes out in the sea, and watch the skateboarders zoom around the skate-park together.
Now I’m Learning to Love the War by subpop
It’s possible to get lost in this song – to get distracted by the interaction between his voice and the beat and come up for air halfway through a verse thinking Rome is burning, you go on and keep fiddling, I’m going to dance – and then also realize you are Alice standing athwart the Ironic Looking-glass and he probably means every word sincerely.
This happens every time I listen to this song.
Only Son of the Ladiesman by subpop
For good or for ill this one is my favorite.
This is the one I have listened to the most often, because it came out first. Also because it has steady thump-sway beat which I particularly enjoy.
Everyman Needs a Companion by subpop
Joseph Campbell and the Rolling Stones / couldn’t give me a myth / so I had to write my own: I don’t think I want to tattoo this lyric on myself.
I think I’d rather write it on the back of a postcard and mail it off, and hope whomever I was mailing it to would read it and know it meant come meet me where-ever I am, I want to mis-spend an afternoon (or a lifetime) with you.
J. Tillman will be taking his show on the road (scroll down for dates) this spring/summer. I won’t be able to see him when he stops through New York, so I’m hoping he’ll be back again in the fall. But the rest of you, if he’s visiting your town: go and see him.
Because we’ve all got that one, you know the one I mean: it never works but you always want to think it will. And they always know exactly when to call.
Sometimes it goes so, so well, for a while:
http://youtu.be/0peTfMOdDoo
Other times, you end up going all the way down the rabbit hole:
![Father John Misty - Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KtOToiIDNRA/0.jpg)
When it finally crashes and burns, you have to remember, you are still a rock star, with rock moves:
Though not everyone is so into all that DRAMA.
Though, okay, maybe a LITTLE bit of drama is fine:
Just enough to get your pulse going:
And maybe lead to shenanigans in public:
Especially if it ends happily ever after:
![Christina Perri - Arms [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MeW0Sl0tNS8/0.jpg)
Because against all odds and in defiance of experience and good sense, I do believe in a thing called love:
![THE DARKNESS - I Believe In A Thing Called Love [Hammersmith. Nov 2011]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4t5aOdDIXJ4/0.jpg)