Father John Misty performs live in The Current studio
by David Campbell, Father John Misty and Leah Garaas
April 06, 2015
Ahead of a sold out show in the First Avenue mainroom with Sup Pop lablemates King Tuff, Josh Tillman—aka Father John Misty—stopped by The Current studio to perform tracks off his latest album I Love You, Honeybear and to chat with host David Campbell.
On I Love You, Honeybear: "I think that for me, with this album in particular, intimacy was a way for me to kind of cut through all this ideology and all this bullsh*t and myth making and whatever else and just [focus on] the reality of two people seeing each other for what they really are."
On the I Love You, Honeybear album art: "The cover image of me as this baby, that's not an incidental image. That's really, I feel, the best articulation of what's happening on the album. Which is, for me, the first year or so of intimacy was really hard and I turned into this breast-grabbing, needy, jealous, tantrum-throwing baby. That's not a person that I want to be, but I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't ignore this thing manifesting in me, or this thing that had been there all along, y'know, turning a woman into a sacred object or love into some magical solution. That's what Honeybear is about, that initial disillusionment with my preexisting magical thinking that that baby was never going to have to be exposed."
On the "observer self" and his wife, Emma: "When you ask me like, 'What is spirituality?' or like, 'What is the soul?' or something, I really think that it's the psychological well-being of the observer self because we all have this observer self, this dialogue that's going on all the time, we're watching ourselves do things and a lot of the time that observer self is really depressed or is really angry, y'know, and just makes you second guess everything you say and do. That's a sickness." ... "What's interesting about Emma [Tillman's wife] and I, in order to have real intimacy, I have to surrender that addiction and defer not to my observer self's idea of myself but to her idea of me. That's really fuc*king hard."
Songs Performed
"I Love You, Honeybear"
"Holy Sh*t"
"I Went to the Store One Day"
All songs off Father John Misty's latest album, I Love You, Honeybear, out now via Sub Pop.
Hosted by David Campbell
Produced by Jade
Engineered by Mike DeMark
Web feature by Leah Garaas
