Father John Misty’s Josh Tillman talks to us about the long con, the humor and contempt that has defined his sound and persona. Photo courtesy of Sub Pop.
As hard as it is to get the spotlight, artists do anything to keep it. Contracted performances, custom merchandise, music videos — it’s all a part of the game for the marquee label musician. For Josh Tillman, it isn’t a question of whether he’ll meet these obligations; it’s how he’ll subvert them in the process.
Before , it was a dilemma he could only dream of. Recording as J. Tillman, he was another drop in the bucket of ill-understood acoustic poetics with plenty to talk about but no one listening. His biggest hurdle to making it was shedding his bullet-point description as the drummer for indie folk darlings . (It would seem he still has work to do on that front: his PR rep cautioned me against mentioning the band in our interview.)
Tillman has found his voice with Father John Misty, a reinvention in style thatap bore two albums of thoughtful, often hilarious music, as well as niche success. His new album, “I Love You, Honeybear,” cracked the Billboard top 20, and as is routine on his latest tour, his show at Denver’s Ogden Theatre sold out weeks in advance. He is, in his bracket of obscurity, somewhat of a celebrity now, although he doesn’t know quite how to take it.
“Most of the time, it makes me feel stupid or embarrassed for myself,” he says.
But rather than bow to meet the big stage, Tillman continually thumbs his nose at it. In a performance of single “Bored In The USA” on David Letterman, his winks came in the form of a player piano and the same canned laughter included in the studio version of the song. When the time came for the now industry-standard early stream of the album, it was done via , or SAP, which offered each song in the low-detail MIDI audio format commonplace in early video games and greeting cards.
“Thatap [what happens] when contempt becomes obsession,” Tillman offers in the way of explanation. Social media, music streaming and critics are just a few entires in Tillman’s black book that he’s found himself fixated on. “Satire is how I get it out of my system. Itap the only relief I can get from the obsession.”
Considering Tillman’s mastery of the sneer, is brazenly sincere. The album is a clear-eyed appraisal of his insecurities, fears and faults, and how as a newly married man, they implicate more than just himself. For as outspoken as he is on what he hates, love proved tougher for Tillman to articulate.
“I could not get over this suspicion that I was trivializing this experience,” he says. “Thatap manifest in the album title itself, which is the most stupid, silly thing I could think of.”
As Father John Misty, Tillman’s albums have been inspired by these milestone events.
“Itap sort of like the way that I process my life,” Tillman admits. “Fear Fun,” his debut album as Father John Misty, revolved around his time in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon, which begat a period of psychological exploration that inspired his new stage persona. “I Love You, Honeybear” sprang from a marriage.
But you can’t plan revelatory experiences like these — where will the third album come from?
“I do sort of have this long con, so to speak,” Tillman says, balking at first. “I’ll say this. My relationship towards the world has always been fairly one dimensional: I don’t like it. [Laughs] But there’s something about having this person –my wife — and being challenged continually to confront myself that has given me this different empathy where the quote-unquote world is concerned. Thatap where I’m headed at this point.”
It’s hard to say how this philosophical decampment will manifest itself in his music, or crucially, what “long con” he’s intimating. Misery loves company, as his popularity has proved. Without contempt, Father John Misty is merely an instrumental alt-folk band. But Tillman is confident an audience will follow.
“You can be popular for a host of reasons, and I would like to think that the best possible reason for that is that people see something in you that they recognize in themselves,” he says. “That, I can deal with.”
Father John Misty performs at Denver’s Ogden Theatre on Thursday, April 9.
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Dylan Owens writes album reviews, essays and features for Reverb. You can read more from him on his website, or the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
