The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, February 11, 2015 — 5A

‘Honeybear’ is 
candid and lovely

Father John Misty 
becomes a romantic 

on latest album

By BRIAN BURLAGE

Daily Arts Writer

For most of the 18th century, 

men like Father John Misty 
were referred to as libertines. 
Their aim was 
pleasure, 
their 

creed was self-
satisfaction. 
They 
weren’t 

immoral 
so 

much 
as 
they 

were 
amoral. 

Society’s 
rules 

and 
standards 

weren’t flawed, 
necessarily, 
but they were just inadequate, 
inaccurate and irrelevant. Much 
of their daily routines consisted 
of 
elaborate 
and 
self-aware 

schemes 
for 
attention, 
and 

anything done during the day 
was done in the joy of leisure. 
Men like Father John Misty 
lived in whimsy. They lived 
in the world they created for 
themselves.

It’s important to consider I 

Love You, Honeybear within this 
context because until now, for 
Father John Misty, the concept 
of sex has been easy. The concept 
of love, on the other hand, has 
not. Love in this framework is 
like that elusive but fearsome 
luxury, 
the 
awe-inspiring 

aura that lurks behind scented 
candles, French bottles of wine 
and Egyptian cotton bed sheets. 
In Father John Misty’s eyes, the 
mystery in any relationship isn’t 
a question of sex or harbored 
secrets, but of how two people – 
any two people – can create this 
thing called love between them.

Misty (a.k.a. Josh Tillman) 

has called I Love You, Honeybear 
a concept album, inspired by 

the experience of his marriage 
to 
his 
long-time 
girlfriend, 

Emma, who is a photographer. 
The essential “concept” of the 
album is that it tries to recreate 
the confusions as he felt himself 
becoming 
more 
and 
more 

exposed – a sort of gradual turn 
of soul. He found his own world 
invaded and usurped by the 
world of a wonderful woman. 
For the first time in his life, he 
could feel his schemes, tricks 
and self-defenses dissolve into 
something like real affection. 
The 
true 
shock 
occurred 

when he realized that he was 
strangely comfortable with all 
of this.

The 
album’s 
enormous 

sound is, in part, a response 
to the disorientation we feel 
when we must surrender our 
own defenses to someone we 
care about but hardly know. 
On I Love You, Honeybear, 
Misty 
constructs 
cathedrals 

to give his emotions enough 

space to reverberate and then 
conclusively 
condense. 
The 

album’s landscape is vast and 
expansive, but it’s also filled 
with intricacies and subplots. 
Take these 11 songs together 
and there’s a collected sense 
that Father John Misty reaches 
and expands out into the open 
plains of love – in the hope of 
finding some small truth to take 
back with him to share with 
Emma.

And he does. He does this 

a thousand times over. This 
is Tillman the monogamous 
lover, the loyal husband, the sex 
symbol in hiding, baring his soul 
to his new wife, listing all the 
things he barely understands 
about their union. His anxiety 
is evident from the outset, as he 
sings in the opener, “My love, 
you’re the one I want to watch 
the ship go down with / The 
future can’t be real, I barely 
know how long a moment is.” 
And, for a moment, this sounds 
like an earnest confession. Then, 
Misty qualifies it with, “Unless 
we’re naked, getting high on 
the mattress.” In fact, many of 
the album’s sincerest moments 
are delivered within these little 
quips and witticisms. They’re 
fun and intelligent. He writes 
them in so often and under 

every 
circumstance, 
which 

proves his great devotion to this 
budding love. While the humor 
might sound affronting at first, 
we come to understand that it’s 
just his way of being himself.

Aside from the soul-filled 

philosophical aspects of the 
album, it is, in its sound alone, 
a folk-pop masterpiece. These 
songs could exist as any one 
of a dozen Elton John B-sides 
or 
Randy 
Newman 
bootleg 

cuts. Misty pulls the melodies 
straight from ’70s psychedelic 
rock and adds to them the emo-
tional gusto of modern folk 
and indie, making them sturdy, 
replete with warmth. The rich-
est part, perhaps, of I Love You, 
Honeybear is that it sounds like 
a complete album. “Chateau 
Lobby #4 (in C for Two Vir-
gins)” touches on the southern 
influence, while “True Affec-
tion” graces electronic. “When 
You’re Smiling and Astride Me” 
bears soul, “Strange Encoun-
ter” addresses prog rock and 
“The Ideal Husband” achieves 
classic rock.

The 
album’s 
emotion 

culminates with the last three 
tracks, 
each 
reminiscent 

of 
a 
distinct 
Beatles-esque 

temperament. 
“Holy 
Shit” 

is teeming with historic and 

cultural 
allusion 
as 
Misty 

wonders what it all has to do 
with him. In his reasoning, 
Misty stops and ponders when 
he reaches the idea of love. 
“Maybe love is just an economy 
based on resource scarcity,” he 
belts uncertainty along with 
several other questions. Then, 
however, he offers the song’s 
first assured statement, the one 
thing he knows for sure: “But 
our fantasy is what that’s gotta 
do with you and me.”

While “I Went to the Store 

One Day” quietly capitalizes on 
this sentiment, “Bored in the 
USA” predicts it. Indeed, “Bored” 
supersedes the whole album as 
a reflection on what it means 
to love in modern American 
society. Set to a soft piano 
melody and backed by a chorus 
of strings, Misty reveals how 
far he’s come in his time with 
Emma. “Now, I’ve got a lifetime 
to consider all the ways / I’ve 
grown more disappointing to you 
/ As my beauty warps and fades 
/ I suspect you feel the same,” 
he sings. Suddenly, the album 
clicks. In light of his marriage, 
his emotional confusion and 
thoughts about love, a clear idea 
takes shape. Father John Misty 
has 
become, 
hopelessly 
and 

unwittingly, a romantic.

ALBUM REVIEW

SUB POP RECORDS

“We don’t want none unless you got man buns, hun(nybear)”

A

‘I Love You, 
Honeybear’

Father John 
Misty

Sub Pop Records

TV REVIEW
‘Saul’ needs to break 
out of ‘Bad’ ’s shadow

By CHLOE GILKE

Managing Arts Editor

“Better Call Saul” is no “Break-

ing Bad.”

Ever since the acclaimed meth 

tragedy 
aired 

its 
brilliant 

finale one year, 
four 
months 

and 13 days ago 
(not 
that 
I’m 

counting), 
a 

Jesse Pinkman-
shaped hole has 
remained 
in 

TV’s collective 
heart. No other 
series 
could 

ever thrill in quite the same way 
as “Breaking Bad.” Nothing can 
ever strike all the same nerves and 
leave viewers breathless and curs-
ing Vince Gilligan’s name when 
the end title card flashes across the 
screen. But “Breaking Bad” is over, 
and “Better Call Saul” has risen to 
Heisenberg’s money throne. To be 
successful, “Saul” needed to assert 
its independence with a series pre-
miere that leaves all comparisons 
in the Albuquerque dust.

“Better 
Call 
Saul” 
follows 

“Breaking 
Bad” 
fan-favorite 

Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk, 
“Nebraska”) back in 2002, when 
his name was Jimmy McGill 
and his characteristic bravura 
and grandiose confidence didn’t 
extend past the courtroom. Jimmy 
is introduced as an unglamorous 
public defender, the very antithesis 
of Saul. His office is in a cramped 
corner of a storefront nail salon, 
he drives a vulgar yellow car 
that’s a far cry from the smooth 
Caddy that he drove in “Breaking 
Bad” and he barely makes $700 
defending a couple of little teenage 
shits who jerked off into a severed 
head. But even through these 
pathetic endeavors, Odenkirk’s 
performance 
shines 
with 
a 

familiar charisma. His name is 
Jimmy and he’s got a sleeper sofa 
in his office, but this dude is Saul 
Goodman to the core.

But more than escaping his 

dire financial situation and get-
ting cases that don’t involve mas-
turbating into severed heads, 
what Jimmy really craves is some 
adventure in his life. He recalls 
the days he was known as “Slip-
pin’ Jimmy” of Cicero, the kid who 
slid on every icy surface in Chicago 
and collected every injury check 
he could get his hands on. When 
Jimmy literally runs into a couple 
of skater punks and realizes that 
their intentional dive in front of 
his car was a Slippin’ Jimmy-level 
scheme, he can’t help but want to 
join up. The kids know the busi-
ness and Jimmy knows the chem-
istry, so they team up to rip off an 
embezzling bureaucrat and reap-
propriate his stolen cash into their 
empty pockets. Unlike Walter 

White, Jimmy McGill already has 
the slimy DNA, and all he needs is 
one catalyst to help him break bad.

Where “Better Call Saul” fal-

ters, though, is in its shameless 
homage to its parent series. The 
show makes a fairly convincing 
case for why it should be seen as 
a separate entity from “Breaking 
Bad,” but “Saul” still occasionally 
slips back into “Breaking Bad”-
lite territory. The premiere’s 
opening shows Saul working in a 
Nebraska Cinnabon store, frown-
ing and making melancholy cin-
namon rolls to an incongruous 
musical 
soundtrack. 
Stylisti-

cally, the black and white visu-
als and montage editing could 
be straight out of an episode of 
“Breaking Bad,” but the scene 
also lacks a more metaphorical 
color. In showing viewers what 
happened to Saul after he left the 
“Breaking Bad” universe, “Saul” 
assumes that its viewers need 
a cheap hook to engage with 
Jimmy’s story. “Breaking Bad” is 
dead and gone, and “Saul” would 
be wiser not to dig up its bones.

“Better Call Saul” also spot-

lights a few “Breaking Bad” 
alums in addition to Odenkirk, 
Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan 
Banks, “Community”) and Tuco 
Salamanca 
(Raymond 
Cruz, 

“Major Crimes”) in the first two 
episodes alone. Their characters 
are incorporated with varying 
degrees of success. Mike runs the 
booth at the parking lot where 
Jimmy parks his car, and while 
it’s great to see Banks again, the 
fact that he’s manning a park-
ing lot booth makes little sense. 
Wasn’t Mike supposed to be a for-
mer Philadelphia cop? Does this 
parking lot nonsense take place 
before or after he became a pro-
fessional “fixer” and henchman? 
Why didn’t he continue to give 
Saul shit about always forgetting 
to pay for a fifth sticker when the 
two were in “Breaking Bad?” So 
far, Mike hasn’t been given suffi-
cient material to justify his being 
on this show, but I trust that 

Jonathan Banks wouldn’t agree 
to appear on “Saul” unless he had 
better prospects than this silly 
cameo.

At the end of the first half of 

the premiere, Jimmy finds a gun 
pointed to his face and some 
shadow in the doorway threat-
ening to shoot it. The camera 
swivels to reveal Tuco, perpetu-
ally angry and protective of his 
elderly relatives as we remember 
him from “Breaking Bad.” It’s an 
effective cliffhanger, but one that 
assumes that everyone watching 
has seen “Breaking Bad.” This 
is a dangerous assumption for a 
network to make when it needs 
a show to gather its own unique 
fanbase. Tuco is incorporated 
into the plot more smoothly in 
the next episode, but it still plays 
like a re-hashing of the episode 
“Grilled” in the second season 
of “Breaking Bad.” Tuco holds 
innocent people hostage while 
his old family member is home, 
shouts a lot and threatens them 
until a dire injury puts an end to 
the situation. Fans of the parent 
show have seen this all before, 
and it’s unfortunate that “Better 
Call Saul” so actively refuses to 
break new ground with its plot.

“Better Call Saul” doesn’t 

deserve all these comparisons. 
When you strip away its art-
less 
rehashing 
of 
“Breaking 

Bad” material, the dark humor 
is sublimely biting, and Jimmy 
is a compelling subject for char-
acter study. But “Saul” needs to 
divorce itself from Saul Good-
man, Walter White and Jesse 
Pinkman. Jimmy shouldn’t aim 
to become some mythic, law-
yer version of Heisenberg. Cor-
ruption already pumps through 
his veins, whether he’s Jimmy 
from the block, Saul the king or 
Gene in a sad mall Cinnabon – 
we know exactly who this man 
is at his core. “Better Call Saul” 
already holds promise of being 
great on its own, if only it would 
stop leaning on “Breaking Bad” 
and give this lawyer his justice.

AMC

“Where’s Huell when you need him?”

B

‘Better 
Call Saul’

Series Premiere 
Mondays at 
10 p.m.

AMC

