Japanese American singer/songwriter Mitski is back with her latest release, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” an ode to love and its complications through the crooning sounds and winding hills of Americana.
Mitski is an artist that has grown exponentially in popularity over the last three years.
With the social media app TikTok helping a wider population discover all kinds of different music, Mitski has gained a massive fanbase because of it.
Mitski and everything surrounding her life became of interest to a bigger fanbase who were so deeply connected with her music and lyrics, relating it back to their lives and creating a connection that is parasocial in nature.
So much so in fact, when Mitski politely asked on X for fans to not use their phones at her shows as much, the backlash was swift.
People felt entitled to Mitski and her music after her popularity grew, but to be honest, this was always something she dealt with as an artist.
Contemplating retirement during the height of her career, she announced in July she signed a new record deal with her label Dead Oceans, announcing she wasn’t going anywhere.
After moving to Nashville early last year, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” clearly shows the city’s influence on Mitski’s sound in this record.
Slow strung guitars and quiet piano notes echo throughout the album, sounding like a winding road down through the countryside.
The further Mitski gets in the journey she’s taking us on, the more lucious the soundscapes get.
Not only in the soundscapes, but through her lyrics we find that her winding road down through the countryside is her way of expressing all of her inner turmoil and feelings as a human being trying to navigate the world as best as possible.
In the opening track “Bug Like an Angel,” Mitski ruminates over the narrator’s rueful mistakes and broken promises while touching on the issue of alcoholism.
“When I'm bent over, wishin' it was over / makin' all variety of vows I'll never keep / I try to remember the wrath of the devil / Was also given him by God” reminds me that Mitski’s power is in her writing, the most beautiful prose over sensations that can only be described as gut wrenching.
In “I Don’t Like My Mind,” Mitski reminisces over a bad Christmas, it felt like she opened up my head and stole a memory straight out of my mind.
“I don't like my mind, I don't like being left alone in a room / With all its opinions about the things that I've done / So, yeah, I blast music loud, and I work myself to the bone.”
Her brilliant writing about the idea of stuck memories we cannot forget continuing to haunt us, became the quick winner of the album.
“And then I get sick and throw up and there's another memory that gets stuck / Inside the walls of my skull waiting for its turn to talk.”
She continues the idea of a haunting past on the track “When Memories Snow,'' accompanied by a chorus of vocals that sound straight out of heaven.
“When memories snow / And cover up the driveway / I shovel all those memories / Clear the path to drive to the store / And when memories melt / I hear them in the drain pipe / Drippin' through the downspout / As I lie awake in the dark.”
Mitski has been placed into the trope of “sad girl music” where mostly female and queer artists are pigeonholed into a category of “sad” and “depressing,” labels that Mitski herself has rejected.
In a video interview with Crack, a pop culture magazine based in Europe, Mitski reacted negatively to the label of her music being released as a “big day for sad bitches.”
“It was reductive and tired like 5, 10 years ago and it still is today ... Let's retire the sad girl schtick, it’s over. Sad girl is over,” she said in the Jan. 19, 2022 interview.
In a small but loud way, Mitski reiterates what she’s always said, her music is a story, but it’s her music. It means so much more than just being sad or her lyrics making you feel like you need to go to therapy.
Her music is not made for us to so deeply project our own lives onto.
With that being said, I cannot lie and say that Mitski isn’t the artist of my life, because she is.
My problems are not hers and when I listen to her words it’s not just about being sad– but to hear a story, to help me navigate the more difficult aspects of my life.
I adore the way her music makes me feel, but there was a moment in my life where I lost my love for her music.
It almost felt like a chapter closed, where her popularity exceeded what I had expected, where Mitski seemingly became everyone’s favorite, and her music was bastardized into a trope of “sad girl music” for TikTok edits.
Her previous release, 2022s “Laurel Hell,” showed her versatility with her sound and in her lyrics, with more synth-pop beats and upbeat arrangements.
With this release I felt like it was time for me to move on. Her music in the past with more seminal albums including “Puberty 2,” got me through some of the worst hardships in life, so I thought maybe it’s not what I needed anymore.
Then with “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” I realized I still loved Mitski in a completely different light.
I stopped associating her with hardships and troubling times in my life, whether I was sad or not sad, in love or not in love, she reminded me of broken relationships from my past, I realized that just like Mitski, I’ve moved forward in life.
I’ve loved and lost and like her, choosing love is the best thing anyone can do ever in their respective lives.
In “My Love Mine All Mine,” Mitski chooses love tenfold, crooning about her love manifesting into the moon for her partner.
“My baby here on earth / showed me what my heart was worth / so, when it comes to be my turn / could you shine it down here for her?”
In her artist biography on Spotify she wrote "The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people. I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this love that l've created onto other people.”
Mitski shows that she understands love and the emotions surrounding it, both the bad and good.
My loss of interest in her music wasn’t just a loss, but me realizing that I could listen to her normally without such a strong attachment to certain memories in life.
I too was reminded that no matter what, I’m always going to choose love and whatever in the world comes along with it.
Mitski chooses to love freely and unflinchingly, because it’s all we have.
