For someone with a reputation as a noted wordsmith, Father John Misty doesn’t seem to have the phrase “happy ending” in his vocabulary, and his new music video for “I Love You, Honeybear” proves it.
The video stars Brett Gelman and Susan Traylor as EMTs indulging in a night of debauchery. The two pop pills and down several bottles of whiskey in the back of their ambulance, fooling with their medical supplies in rather unprofessional ways, to put it mildly. Meanwhile, Misty—real name: Josh Tillman—and his wife Emma sleep peacefully, wrapped in each other’s warm embrace, blissfully unaware of the gas leak that is sending noxious fumes into their bedroom. The EMTs eventually arrive on the scene, but their efforts are in vain.
Pretty morbid stuff, but nothing out of the ordinary for Misty, who released I Love You, Honeybear in February. After all, this is the guy who croons, “I’ve brought my mother’s depression; you’ve got your father’s scorn and a wayward aunt’s schizophrenia” on the title track without batting an eye. Classical literature used to be categorized as either tragedy or comedy, but it seems like Misty prefers to laugh and cry all at once.