FATHER JOHN MISTY
I LOVE YOU HONEYBEAR (PEARLESCENT RED VINYL) - LP
UPC: 098787163001
Label: SUB POP
Format: LP
Release Date: February 14, 2025
In stock items ship within 48 hours
Father John Misty's landmark 2015 sophomore album, I Love You, Honeybear, is back on vinyl, remastered and repackaged as a single LP. (It was originally released as a double LP.) The now-classic album includes fan favorites "Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)," and the title track, "I Love You, Honeybear."I Love You, Honeybear debuted at number 17 on the Billboard 200 chart, reached number 3 on the Billboard US Top Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, and number 2 on the US Folk Albums chart. It earned a Pitchfork Best New Music, a perfect score from Exclaim!, and rave reviews from NME, Mojo, Q, Spin, and more. It was hailed as one of the best albums of 2015 by Pitchfork, Billboard, The A.V. Club, NME, and Stereogum. As of late 2024, the album has scanned over 341,000, and sold over 92,000 on vinyl in the US.I Love You, Honeybear was produced by Josh Tillman and Jonathan Wilson, and mixed by Phil Ek. This 2024 edition was remastered in 2024 by Adam Ayan at Ayan Mastering.
“I Love You, Honeybear is a concept album about a guy named Josh Tillman who spends quite a bit of time banging his head against walls, cultivating weak ties with strangers and generally avoiding intimacy at all costs. This all serves to fuel a version of himself that his self-loathing narcissism can deal with. We see him engaging in all manner of regrettable behavior.
“In a parking lot somewhere he meets Emma, who inspires in him a vision of a life wherein being truly seen is not synonymous with shame, but possibly true liberation and sublime, unfettered creativity. These ambitions are initially thwarted as jealousy, self-destruction and other charming human character traits emerge. Josh Tillman confesses as much all throughout.
“The album progresses, sometimes chronologically, sometimes not, between two polarities: the first of which is the belief that the best love can be is finding someone who is miserable in the same way you are and the end point being that love isn't for anyone who isn't interested in finding a companion to undertake total transformation with. I won't give away the ending, but sex, violence, profanity and excavations of the male psyche abound.
“My ambition, aside from making an indulgent, soulful, and epic sound worthy of the subject matter, was to address the sensuality of fear, the terrifying force of love, the unutterable pleasures of true intimacy, and the destruction of emotional and intellectual prisons in my own voice. Blammo.
“This material demanded a new way of being made, and it took a lot of time before the process revealed itself. The massive, deranged shmaltz I heard in my head, and knew had to be the sound of this record, originated a few years ago while Emma and I were hallucinating in Joshua Tree; the same week I wrote the title track. I chased that sound for the entire year and half we were recording. The means by which it was achieved bore a striking resemblance to the travails, abandon and transformation of learning how to love and be loved; see and be seen. There: I said it. Blammo.” -Josh Tillman (A.K.A. Father John Misty)
TRACK LIST:
