Father John Misty – “Please Don’t Die” Video
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Chris Hopewell is the claymation animator behind such videos as Radiohead’s “Burn The Witch,” Run The Jewels’ “Don’t Get Captured,” and Father John Misty’s “Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution.” He’s teamed with Misty again for the latest single from the imminent, excellent God’s Favorite Customer.
“Please Don’t Die,” which Misty recently performed live for the first time, is a sad, slow glide in the exquisite folk-pop style we’ve come to expect from FJM, built around the chorus, “Honey, I’m worried about you/ You’re too much to lose.” It’s easy to imagine the song as an exchange between Josh Tillman and his wife, Emma. “I’m feeling older than my 35 years,” Tillman laments, before intoning, “Oh God, you must have woken up/ To me saying that it’s all too much/ I’ll take it easy with the morbid stuff.”
The video, however, does not take it easy on the morbid stuff. It begins with an animated Misty holed up in the squalid hotel room that serves as the album’s home base, but soon he’s joining the Grim Reaper for a boat ride down the River Styx. Along the way they stop at a piano-powered skeleton dance party before making their way to a graveyard with Tillman’s tombstone hanging over an empty grave. More skeletons emerge to pull Tillman into the deep, but a woman who may or may not be Emma swoops in on the arms of angels to save him. It’s more affecting than you’d expect a claymation clip to be. Watch below.
God’s Favorite Customer is out 6/1 on Sub Pop/Bella Union. Pre-order it here.