Father John Misty Wrote a Love Album. This Time, It’s Not About Himself.
The artist has always shown flashes of real heartbreak. But with his latest release, God’s Favorite Customer (2018), Josh Tillman is finally ready to meet these meditations head-on.
The last track of Fear Fun — Josh Tillman’s 2012 release under the moniker “Father John Misty” — is titled “Every Man Needs a Companion.” Ending his first record and starting the next with this imperative in mind, Tillman created the foundations for a love album early on.
Yet, his next release, I Love You, Honeybear (2015), , found Tillman self-possessed, looking for his own reflection in his partner’s eyes.
In its own right, Honeybear is a lovely album, perhaps Father John Misty’s best. On “True Affection”, we’re transported to some of Tillman’s most intimate moments of disconnect. The album’s final track, “I Went To The Store One Day”, wallows in love’s serendipity as Tillman traces his marriage to its first chance encounter. The result is a moment that’s as vulnerable as it is beautiful.
Yet, Tillman still indulges in one of his favorite tropes: that of the tortured artist. Demonic lovemaking, babies in the oven, and blow-up doll analogies are made oddly lyrical and amusing. Even the album art for Honeybear signals a perverse subversion to all things sacred. Tillman gave his artist, Stacey Rozich, creative freedom — with one exception: “I want my face to be on a baby’s body, breastfeeding a beautiful woman, with some kind of Renaissance iconography,” he told her. Done.
Despite its beauty, Honeybear feels like something we’ve heard before—if not from Tillman, than from any other bearded white guy putting his fucked-up psyche to music. It’s why lots of listeners understandably grow tired of Father John Misty.
If you’re a critic of Tillman’s, you could claim that he falls victim to his own mystique, and that it’s no accident. Each new record balloons the ego of a man basking in his profound self-importance.
But if you’re in the mood to sympathize, if only for a moment, then Tillman’s self-centeredness appears a little more rational.
How are we to understand a relationship without first understanding ourselves, how we operate with and without our partners? It’s only after we’ve asked ourselves these questions, struggled with them — and, in Tillman’s case on Honeybear, produced eleven tracks about them — that we can focus on the other half of the equation.
Tillman’s clearly pushed this introspection to its breaking point, and Pure Comedy (2017) shows that he’s probably even taken it too far. Even still, this process offered some Tillman’s finest work.
“Leaving L.A.,” a 13-minute opus at the center of Pure Comedy, offers flashes of a Tillman trying to see past his own reflection. Despite the length of the track, the attempt is a fleeting one, and it drowns in Pure Comedy’s innumerable critiques of, well, everything.
But with his latest release, God’s Favorite Customer (2018), Tillman appears more than ready to resume these meditations.
Largely inspired by a two-month stay in a New York hotel, Father John Misty’s fourth record pivots from the abstract and into the rivetingly particular. Where Pure Comedy showcases him at the lectern, Tillman’s work now captures his ignorance.
It’s an image of Father John Misty we’re unaccustomed to — a sullen figure, head down and palms up, roiled by his need for (surprise!) a companion.
In 39 minutes, God’s Favorite Customer momentarily dismisses the well-traveled annals of Tillman’s mind — a move that seems equally surprising to Misty listeners as it is to the man, himself. God’s Favorite Customer, at last, places a self-exiled performer alongside a companion: his wife, Emma.
But to call this other-centric descent a natural one is to ignore the dread Tillman has about the entire enterprise of love. After introducing himself in drunken, self-pitying stupor on “Mr. Tillman” and “Date Night,” Tillman rushes toward Emma. Dedication on full display, “Just Dumb Enough to Try” features Tillman at possibly his most dependent, most tethered.
The centerpiece of a quick yet endlessly-spanning record, though, has to be “Please Don’t Die” — an assortment of thinly-veiled reflections on suicide and inevitable loss. As Tillman quietly mourns his own life, it’s Emma’s voice that takes control.
On the surface, it’s a simple plea: “Please don’t die / Wherever you are tonight.” Yet, these words (Tillman sings them from Emma’s point-of-view) feel like they’ve crossed oceans to reach Tillman.
Drugged and tired, Tillman’s character has always been beyond our grasp. But this time, we notice that he’s unable to reach out a hand of his own. Emma’s plea, though, can transcend their physical and emotional distance. It saves him; it saves them.
It’s hard to listen to “Please Don’t Die” without picturing Emma taking her husband’s hand and pulling him from his own grave — an image that actually appears in the song’s charming claymation music video.
Hand in hand, the delicate figures of Emma and Josh Tillman share a kiss and ascend into a white-flashed sky, unmistakably as companions. Because, after all, everybody needs one.
