Rating: 8/10

Highlights: Bored in the USA, Chateau Lobby #4, The Ideal Husband

*Explicit Content*

From former Fleet Foxes member Joshua Tillman came a solo career. Granted, he had one for quite a while already — even before his work with Fleet Foxes — but after the band went on hiatus in 2012, Tillman left and renamed his project “Father John Misty,” and in that same year, released Fear Fun, his debut under the FJM name.

Its followup, I Love You, Honeybear, was released on Feb. 10, 2015. It followed the release of the track “Bored in the USA,” (a track with lyrics almost as uncomfortable as the album title itself) and an unconventional promotional technique in which the entire album was uploaded to Tillman’s own streaming service, with all of the vocals removed. So in the end, how does it stack up?

Pretty well, actually. I can admit without any guilt that I had not listened to Father John Misty before the release of Honeybear. But from its first track, I could feel that it was going to be one of those albums I could listen to all the way through on the first try. I was reminded of one of my favorite albums of 2014, Sun Kil Moon’s Benji. Both albums are singer-songwriters getting a little too personal in a way that keeps the listener hooked. It’s a type of album where making your song title a simple statement is understandable and accepted (compare “I Went to the Store One Day” with Benji’s “I Watched the Film the Song Remains the Same”).

Presented as a concept album about Tillman falling in love with his wife, the songs surely do fit the bill. “I Went to the Store One Day” ends the album with Tillman asking “seen you around, what’s your name?” While the album opens with its title track, it places Tillman and his lover in the midst of an apocalypse: “Everything is doomed/and nothing will be spared/but I love you, honeybear.” It’s a dramatic recounting of Tillman’s marriage, from start to present. When I say dramatic, I don’t exaggerate — in “Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)” he paints himself as a man falling in love for the “first time.” “You left a note in your perfect script: ‘Stay as long as you want’,” he sings. “I haven’t left your bed since.”

But the album breaks occasionally from Tillman crooning over his wife. The aforementioned “Bored in the USA” finds him expressing his disappointment with modern American society (of course, the title itself is a play on Bruce Springsteen’s track.) The track opens with the sentiment, “how many people rise and say/’my brain’s so awfully glad to be here/for yet another mindless day.’” Later, painfully awkward laugh tracks compliment the lines “They gave me a useless education/and a subprime loan/on a craftsman home./Keep my prescriptions filled/and now I can’t get off/but I can kind of deal/with being bored in the USA.” The lyrics themselves are honest enough to warrant some reflection, but those canned laughs just make the listener stir in their seat and wait for it to end.

Overall, I Love You, Honeybear is the first album of 2015 that has really drawn me in, and I will definitely be listening to it again and again for the rest of the year. Highly recommended.