New Music: Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear (Album Stream)

Father John Misty lays his heart bare but then throws acid over it in I Love You, Honeybear.

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"Mobile lifestyle, lovely sex, independence, happiness oh and no one ever really knows the real you," sings Father John Misty in Holy Shit, as he seemingly extols and mopes about the desires and perceptions of being middle-class. Yes we want to be able to go to Paris and take the same goddamn photo of the Eiffel Tower, yeah sure we all want a good fuck but we wouldn’t be too close with that clingy individual. Oh wait, I feel alone in this world. It’s so middle-class it’s barely funny.

You can almost hear Father John Misty chuckling as he wrote down the lyrics. But because of how he plays guitar he obtains this carefree status that puts him above such speculation. Instead he’s vulnerable young man, something only heightened by his beard and the fact that he was part of Fleet Foxes. And within I Love You, Honeybear there is a timeless beauty; it’s a traditional singer-songwriter album with the weeping guitars, endless self-pondering and mind-melting atmospheres that just suck you in with their warmth. But as your mind sinks through the album it comes with digs mixed in with honeyed humour and you feel perplexed. On the one hand he’s delving into the complexities of middle-class life but then he’s pointing out how fickle we all are. And then he’s turning around to say it’s actually really hard and we can…HA! Got you. And so it goes on.

You’re left feeling confused after I Love You, Honeybear, but life is full of contradictions.