Summer 2012. Jenny and I have just moved to Minneapolis and I’m working at the Half Price Books in the suburb of St. Louis Park. I’m in charge of pricing the CDs in the store’s basement, and considering that this was one of the chain’s Top 5 stores in regard to buying used books, DVDs, and CDs, there were a lot. My buddy David--who took over the post when I transferred over to the store in St. Paul--wrote an excellent essay about his attempt to collect 100 copies of 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged live album because we saw so many copies of that damn album that he could have built a little clubhouse in that basement (check out David’s book One Million Maniacs). So, the scene is set. I’m sitting there working through hundreds of CDs a day. It’s the best job I ever had. It was an absolutely zen experience sitting down there, playing whatever CD looked interesting on the stereo we had for “testing” the discs to make sure they worked. I see the cover of Father John Misty’s debut and think: what the hell is this? I see that it’s on Sub-Pop which gives me the green light to pop it in the stereo. And then I listen to the album at least once a day for the next two months. Tillman’s voice hypnotized me. The bizarro, swaggering story of this guy out of his element in Los Angeles was captivating in every way. It’s out there, under the influence of psychedelics, and sure I Love You Honeybear and God’s Favorite Customer are more refined distillations of Father John Misty, but the rawness of this one, of this dude who had pigeonholed himself as this indie folk singer breaking off the shackles and getting weird, is pure magic. I feel like I should be irritated by Josh Tillman, but his albums keep ending up on my year end lists and I know better than to question this kind of stuff. “Only Son of a Ladiesman” is one of the absolute killers of the 2010s and if that song doesn’t do it for you I don’t know what to tell you.
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