Week of 3.2.15

Album spotlight: Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

On his second album, Josh Tillman provides the soundtrack to a skeptic falling in love in contemporary America. Tillman, formerly a solo artist and a drummer for Fleet Foxes who now performs as Father John Misty, doesn’t believe in love, or at least that he is deserving of it. Songs like “Ideal Husband” and “Holy Shit” discuss his doubt in finding love and being able to commit to it.

“Binging on unearned attention / I’ve said awful things, such awful things,” Tillman says in the first track, doubting his right to love.

“Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity / But what I fail to see is what that’s gotta do with you and me,” Tillman says in the latter, commenting on the relationship between compatibility and consumerism that he wants no part of.

“I Love You, Honeybear” takes us through the highs and the lows of finding and cementing true romance. The album is more about one man’s tortured journey through courtship than it is about the final product, his recent marriage to his wife, Emma. Tillman’s testament spares none of the gushy or gut-wrenching details that come along with falling in love and getting married like an average Joe.

Recommended if you like: 1970’s Country-Rock, heartache and romance.

Start with: “When You’re Smiling and Astride Me,” “Chateau Lobby #4” and “The Ideal Husband”

WXOU’s top ten albums for 3.2.15

1. CLOAKROOM, Further Out

2. FATHER JOHN MISTY, I Love You, Honeybear

3. TWERPS, Range Anxiety

4. VIET CONG, Viet Cong

5. TITLE FIGHT, Hyperview

6. SLEATER-KINNEY, No Cities To Love

7. NATALIE PRASS, Natalie Prass

8. JD MCPHERSON, Let The Good Times Roll

9. SONNY AND THE SUNSETS, Talent Night At The Ashram

10. JOSE GONZALEZ, Vestiges And Claws

The WXOU Music Department submits a weekly list of its 30 top albums to the College Music Journal that are currently being played at the station.

Tune into 88.3 FM WXOU Radio to hear these hits all week or visit wxou.org for more.