Photo by Emma Garr

Father John Misty: "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"

With Situation Critical, we present artists with various life situations-- some joyous, some terrible, some bizarre-- to find out which songs, albums, or bands they would turn to under those specific circumstances. This time, we spoke with eclectic singer/songwriter Father John Misty, who is currently on tour in support of his 2012 album Fear Fun.

You're in the car with your grandparents...

My grandparents are dead, so I'd probably put on "Monster Mash".

You're DJ'ing your best friend's wedding...

Justin Bieber's "That Should Be Me". None of my friends have gotten married, though. I’m 32 and I haven’t attended a single wedding. My own wedding will be the first wedding I’ve attended in my adult life. Everybody’s just so progressive in terms of marriage these days. Dating for 25 years is like a new middle-class value.

You're in the middle of a 16-hour plane ride...

Christopher Tignor's “Cathedral, Pt. 2”, which is a five-minute drone that I listen to on repeat. When you’re on a flight, things start to get very existential very quickly: “Why the fuck am I doing this?” Sometimes, the most counterintuitively comforting thought on a long plane ride is that I have a lot more plane rides to take in my life before it’s all done.

The worst part of any flight is going through customs-- like when you reach into your backpack in Australia and realize you’ve brought a glass pipe from home with you. The worst flight that I’ve ever been on was when I was flying into Chicago in a snowstorm three years ago to make a record with Steve Albini. There was a power outage, all the lights went out, the plane dipped really quickly, and everyone screamed, “We’re dying now.” When the lights came back on, it was one of those collective human moments where everyone was taking stock of whether or not they wanted to keep living. The worst part was that, around this time, I was having this really disturbing peace about dying, so that was an undesired moment of staring into the mirror. I always respond to trauma like that by eating, so when the flight landed, I had a cab take me straight to [deep-dish pizza chain] Giordano’s. I sat in a booth soaking wet, staring into the distance, joylessly consuming an entire pizza.

You're using your parents' computer and can only listen to music via YouTube...

I'm still not allowed to use the computer at my parents' house due to the pornography I looked at in high school. I still have to ask them for the password and then deal with their sigh of consternation. But I would probably show them clips of myself, to convince them that I’m doing something worthwhile with my life.

You're sick with the flu...

It's tough for me to find something to focus on when I'm in that nauseous state. I was profoundly hung over the other morning, and there were all of these books by my bed that I had to turn around, because I can’t even read words when I’m nauseous. Maybe I'd listen to side B of Neil Young's On the Beach.

I got real sick in Paris one time, to the point where I had to drop off a tour and stay there for three days. That was pretty brutal, especially because there are so many alien smells in Paris. Especially in grocery stores-- they’re not as addicted to the smell of antibacterial goo in Europe as we are here. One time, I gave myself alcohol poisoning a couple of days in a row, and I completely wiped all the sodium out of my body. I had to go to the hospital, and they brought in four different people to take my blood because they couldn’t believe it. They were like, "You have the blood sodium level of a sick 80-year-old woman." That was definitely the worst I’ve ever felt-- even crying in pain took too much energy.

You're about to play music for your newborn child for the first time...

I'd play some Plastic Ono Band and be like, “This is what you’re in for, motherfucker. This is what you’re going to feel about me in about 30 years." [laughs]

You're walking through a snow storm...

Leon Russell's “Manhattan Island Serenade” is a great desolate-walking song. When I was 20, I dropped out of school, moved to Octavia, New York-- which is in the middle of nowhere-- and worked at a Pizza Hut for six months. I ended up giving away 100 free pizzas because I refused to ask people if they wanted to take advantage of whatever promotions they were offering at the time. I was also a session drummer in Buffalo-- just these terrible session gigs where people would come in with their demos and me and this guy played bass for them. I was like, “Why did I drop out of college?” [laughs]

So I had this mile-long walk home through snowy farmland in a Pizza Hut outfit. This was in the time of the Discman, when you'd have one album at your disposal and you'd shoehorn all of your experiences into the aesthetic of that album, which could be very satisfying.

You're settling down for some light reading...

I don’t do any light reading. I only do heavy reading, and I don’t like to listen to music when I’m reading. But if I was reading Lord of the Rings, I might listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. I remember when I was reading Miles Davis' autobiography, I was more or less listening to his discography chronologically as I was going along with the book. I would play a game where, any time in the book that Miles did heroin, I'd do heroin. [laughs]

You're working at a shitty data-entry job...

I would just open YouPorn in a separate browser window and listen to porn sounds.

You're at a bowling alley...

Gerry Rafferty's “Baker Street”. I like watching people when that one's on, because when they hear the saxophone solo, they assume that they know exactly what they’re in for. But that tune has this really bizarre way of sneaking up on you. I like to coerce people into liking things before they’re prepared to.

My best game at bowling was upwards of... 70. Without bumpers. My first game is always incredible, and then I start playing head games with myself and lose. When I worked construction, I used to bowl all the time. That was when you could smoke in the bowling alley. There are few joys quite like bowling after work.

Your girlfriend just broke up with you via Twitter...

Captain Beefheart's “Dirty Blue Gene”, because it's anti-female and anti-technology at the same time. I’d probably put that one on, break something, and cry-- or I'd ask myself why on earth I’m dating anyone who would break up with someone via Twitter. Then I'd take a nap.

You're kicking back on a Sunday afternoon smoking pot...

Dirty Three's Cinder is a big weed album for me. The first time I smoked weed, I was 19 and in this band called Saxon Shore that was very solidly in line with the post-rock zeitgeist at the time. We were all very self-congratulatory about our musical progressiveness, but then I realized that, if you put vocals to our music, it more or less sounded like Creed. [laughs] That was right around the time that I quit the band... and started smoking a lot of weed.

It's 4 a.m. and you can't fall asleep...

I had this problem two nights ago because I had some amphetamines in me, so I just sang the Beatles' “Across the Universe” to myself until I dozed off. It worked.

You're about to clean your fridge for the first time in two years...

Neil Young's "A Man Needs a Maid", even though I hate [producer] Jack Nitzsche's arrangement. The guy’s a genius, but I pretty much hate everything he did with Neil Young other than playing piano on the backing tracks of Harvest. I actually own this crazy coat that belonged to Jack Nitzsche. He died a junkie’s death, where his junkie friends raided his apartment the day after he died and pawned everything. The coat has such evil voodoo in it.

You're having a dinner party...

Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night is the ultimate dinner party music. Or I'd be looking for some sexy, I-have-food-poisoning-now music.

It's Christmas morning...

My parents fucking loved that Mannheim Steamroller shit, so I basically want to hear anything that’s not that. My folks used to send me a $25 gift card to Starbucks every year for Christmas, so, a day or two before, I'd walk to a Starbucks and buy Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. On Christmas morning, I’d walk around listening to that on my Discman. And then I would go try to find an Arabic establishment to get coffee.

You're drunk on a Friday night and you just got home...

Cass McCombs' “Nobody’s Nixon” is a major drunken tune for me. If I’m really drunk, I’ll put on Phosphorescent's “Cocaine Lights”, which is great when you are dying from cocaine, too.

You're heading to the beach with a boombox...

That's something I'd never do in a million years.