Fear Fun is the first studio album released by American folk musician Josh Tillman under his pseudonym Father John Misty. It was released on April 30, 2012, in the UK and Europe on Bella Union, and in the rest of the world on May 1, 2012, on Sub Pop Produced by both Tillman and Jonathan Wilson, the album was released following Tillman's departure from Fleet Foxes. The album debuted at No. 43 on Top Rock Albums and at No. 123 on Billboard 200, with 4,000 copies sold in its first week. It has sold 83,000 copies in the US as of February 2015. Background and recording In 2009, Josh Tillman decided that he no longer wished to record under the pseudonym J. Tillman. In 2012, he stated, "I remember specifically finishing Year in the Kingdom and then beginning to work on what would become Singing Ax, and I clearly knew Singing Ax was going to be the last "J. Tillman" record ever because I just didn't want to do it anymore." Underlining this change in character and the choosing of the new moniker, Tillman admits the following in an interview for the Dallas Observer: "I used to do these J. Tillman shows and I would play my sad-wizard, Dungeons and Dragons music and watch people's eyes glaze over [...] Then, in between songs, I would start being myself and shooting the shit and telling jokes. ... All of a sudden, people were rapt with attention and I had this very devastating and sobering realization that I was way better at that part of the show than the music part." In addition to the quote above Tillman states that personally he wasn't pleased with the slow and sad style his music was often associated with: "Songwriting for me had always only been interesting and necessary because I saw it as this vehicle for truth, but I had this realization that all I had really done with it was lick my wounds for years and years, and become more and more isolated from people and experiences. I don’t even like wound-licking music, I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it. I don’t believe that until now I’ve ever put anything at risk in my music. I was hell-bent on putting my preciousness at stake in order to find something worth singing about." This contrast between