Josh Tillman is good at lots of things. He’s a gifted songwriter, a wonderful singer and a compelling performer. He’s witty and intelligent. Insightful and entertaining. Basically any time you see him pop up in some interview or on a talk show or some silly youtube promo vid at Whoopdedoodah Fest 2015 or whatever, it’s essential consumption.

He did this thing on tour where he lowered a cutout image of a giant iPhone in front of the screen for people to frame their candid concert snaps with. He has his own perfume. FJM’s debut album (2012’s ‘Fear Fun’) was released with a full novella in the liner notes. His new album was streamed ahead of time on his new (fake) streaming service, ‘SAP’, which offers incredibly lo-fi vocal-less versions of the songs “sapped of their performances, original vocal, atmosphere and other distracting affectations so the consumer can decide quickly and efficiently whether they like a musical composition, based strictly on its formal attributes”. Here he is on Letterman a couple years ago, dancing like a shaman on ayahuasca (two themes of Father John Misty’s first album):

Aaaand again more recently, in support of ‘I Love You, Honeybear’:

Basically, the dude’s a riot. But while ‘Fear Fun’ was one of the best albums of 2012, it still felt layered with irony and cynicism. That was part of the charm, and it was also part of the concept. It was Tillman’s first album with his new band following years as a solo, acoustic, sombre singer-songwriter. Your clichéd folksy white guy with feelings. I mean, one of his J.Tillman albums was called ‘Cancer and Delirium’. Not to say that he wasn’t great at what he did, but it was too stale an idea to feel completely credible even though credibility is the number one goal of that whole ideal. It’s white guilt’s attempt to capture some kind of country blues ideal. With ‘Fear Fun’ he freed himself from those pretences and allowed the songs to travel in whatever direction they needed to go. The origin story of Father John Misty involves a bag of mushrooms and a trip to the desert.

Since then he’s broken down the final barrier of his creativity: Sincerity. He fell in love, he got married. His new album is called ‘I Love You, Honeybear’, and the title track is a love song set beside the doom of a crumbling world. The cynicism, the irony, the wit… all of that remains, but it’s no longer a shield. Instead it’s simply another strength of his song-writing. Something has mellowed or matured or evolved or whatever and now Josh Tillman is a true folk singer.

See, that’s a problem I have with a lot of older music styles. Blues, for example, it seems to have stopped evolving. If you aren’t playing the same throwback 12-bar stuff then you’re yet another rock and roll player. Except that blues has always evolved in new directions. Muddy Waters invented electricity, as the saying goes. Folk singers shouldn’t be straight moulds of Bob Dylan or Elliott Smith or Townes Van Zandt. Folk is such a fluid idea, it’s hard to define it. But gun to my head, I’d call it music of the people. Tales of truth on a twelve-string. How do you connect with the people? You do so through issues or emotions.

This album is a proper concept album. The story of Tillman and his wife Emma’s romance and marriage. Where his last album felt like he was playing a character, now he’s himself, naked and pure. It seems like when people hide behind characters, it’s usually out of a fear of failure. Like, it’s okay if I try this and it doesn’t come off, because this isn’t really me at stake. Actual openness and vulnerability come from being ready to risk whatever you have at stake for something real.

His songs are wordy and intelligent, but not in a pompous way. They flourish as stories and poetry. Musically, I read Patterson Hood compare it “favourably” to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. I get that as well. ‘True Affection’ should be out of place as an electric fable but only the bitter critics will say so. It’s a good song, and good songs fit with good songs. And this album is full of them. ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins)’ is a great one. As is ‘The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment’.

And like all great concept albums, Honeybear reaches a point of clarity at the end. After the laugh out loud hilarity of ‘Bored in the USA’ (Save me White Jesus!), we come to ‘Holy Shit’.

Ancient holy wars

Dead religions, holocausts

New regimes, old ideals

That's now myth, that's now real

Original sin, genetic fate

Revolutions, spinning plates

It's important to stay informed

The commentary to comment on

Oh, and no one ever really knows you and life is brief

So I've heard, but what's that gotta do with this black hole and me?

Listing all these gripes and frustrations, all these flaws in society. How pointless it all is, how corrupt and pathetic. Chasing your own tail down a rabbit hole of lies and deceit. Written on his wedding day, this song is the piece de résistance of the whole set. Circling through these feelings of isolation and panic and pessimism and sarcasm to eventually find himself realising that he doesn’t care about any of it. He’d rather just be happy.

Oh, and love is just an institution based on human frailty

What's your paradise gotta do with Adam and Eve?

Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity

What I fail to see is what that's gotta do with you and me

Then the icing on the cake, ‘I Went To The Store One Day’. A sweeping, indulgent journey through his future, his marriage and his and Emma’s intertwined lives, finishing with a hauntingly pretty recounting of his first words to her. Like Paul McCartney’s Beatle classic ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, with genuine passion and contentment replacing all the whimsy.

All cause I went to the store one day

"Seen you around, what's your name?"

So innocuous, so goddamn poignant. "So much of this album is about intimacy," Tillman told Village Voice. "I see it as a by-product of intimacy and receding narcissism, which is a complete lack of self-awareness.” He stopped being a self-proclaimed asshole who didn’t care about other people and we get a stunning new Father John Misty album out of it. Everybody wins.