‘The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We’: Mitski’s newest album
Scrolling through my Instagram feed, Mitski posted. Mitski posted? Mitski posted. Something about a pre-listening party for her upcoming album everywhere in the world. Clueless of what that means, my index finger sprints to her ticket website. Nothing. Go back to the post. I find Madrid, my eyes trace the date and name of the venue: 13th of September, Marilians Record store. I figure out who of my friends might have a loose idea of who she is, maybe heard the ‘Washing Machine Heart’ audio on Tiktok, and text her to come with me. She says yes, I send an email, we go. The date arrives, my friend and I find ourselves sitting on a green-hued LED-lit record store floor in the hipster San Bernardo, surrounded by what looks like depressed, queer teenagers. Brimmed with the momentary thrill of a beloved artist rewarding our devotion to their music, Mitski gifted us a sweet, candy-sized thirty-six minutes of melophile privilege. In the sport of musical fanaticism, we were watching the recorded game front-row.
Her single ‘Bug Like An Angel’ plays and I remember how the lyric “sometimes a drink feels like family” made me grin when I first heard it, but I can’t help but wonder what in the world I am doing here. The gloomy instrumentals of ‘Buffalo Replaced’ are no help. I want to leave. Should’ve waited and listened to it at home. As I pretend I’m falling asleep, a wave of all-cosmic, neo-classical instrumentals consumes me all the way through the end of the album. Suddenly the portal to heaven has a soundtrack and Mitski’s angelic voice went all the way there to steal it: “Now I bend like a willow/ Thinkin’ of you/ Like a murmurin' brook/ Curvin' about you/ As I sip on the rest of the coffee you left/ A kiss left of you”. This is the most unironically romantic Mitski’s ever been in her music. But regardless of how inhospitable we might be, the woman who wrote ‘Nobody’ did not leave the body of this new Mitski, as loneliness and love, or rather the loneliness felt in the absence of a loved one, is the backbone of this album. She sings about memories. Uncomfortable memories. Memories that snow and “cover up the driveway”, memories she avoids by blasting music and eating a whole cake on an “inconvenient Christmas”. Couldn’t get more unbearable? She gives her soul in exchange for nothing but the sweet numbness of not feeling. All frosted with orchestral instrumentals, experimenting with sylvan sounds and apocalyptic dog barks, reaching a new realm of folkloric and mythical storytelling that digresses from conventional pop lyricism. It is an album to ponder, to listen to, an invitation not to judge, not her, not oneself. Mitski you may not like your mind, but we sure love it.
The album contains some of the most beautiful love ballads I’ve heard in a while, and carries astute lyrics all the way through the album finishing with her victorious, self-realizational end as she murmurs “The Streets Are Mine/ The Night is Mine/ I’m king of all the land”. Every song unabashedly tackles a feeling: in the softest of voices, it manages to shout what it is to be in love, to be lonely, to hate being lonely, to hold on to what time had other plans for. Is the land inhospitable? Are we? Perhaps that was the initial raison d’être for this album, but to its own demise, its release has given the world, and its listeners’ hearts, a breathing space.
