I have a hope and though she’s blind with no name
Buffalo Replaced
She shits where she’s supposed to feed herself while I’m away
Sometimes I think it would be easier without her
But I know nothing can hurt me when I see her sleepin’ face
Fuck it, right, Mitski? Fuck it! Might as well scratch that old dog at least one more time.
It seemed like the “21st Century’s Poet Laureate Of Young Adulthood” was so done with this shit after last year’s ‘Laurel Hell’. That album was the soundtrack of “what capitalism’s churn and enforced responsibilities can do to a person, how art is far from safe from being depressingly commodified and incorporated into the machine”. The relative ‘success’ that they’d so far achieved had done nothing and had meant nothing, so what was even the fucking point? Oh! And the last album their record deal required! See you later, losers! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeace!
It would so obviously be the last album of their career, and in that context is was a suitably dejected and morose goodbye to a broken industry that had given them nothing in return for all their emotional labour. They were fucking done!
Just like when they retired in 2019 (“It’s time to be human again!). Erm… Nononononono, see that was different, because they found out afterwards that her contract required one more album, so ‘Laurel Hell’ was that album. Now they’re finished with this shitshow.
Except… no. They might hate the music industry’s rigmarole, they might have an extreme dislike in being in any sort of public eye and performing for people, but being able to make a living while writing and performing music is a pretty good deal, they supposed. They announced their seventh album to their mailing list by accepting that they may as fucking well:
Ultimately, I recognized that I really want to keep making music, and I’m willing to take the difficult stuff with the wonderful stuff — like any job, or relationship, or worthwhile thing in life. So I renegotiated my contract with my label, and decided to keep making records. Thank you so much for your patience and support while I found my way here. I love you!
To paraphrase, they decided to keep shitting where they’re supposed to.
A whole cake, so please don’t take
I Don’t Like My Mind
Take this job from me
A whole cake, so please don’t take
Take my job from me
Mitski has long inspired a special kind of devotion, and her fans are a special kind of intense. Like, we joke about Swifties, and of course when it comes to sheer numbers, no right minded military general is going to risk declaring war on Taylor Swift fans. You could mow down millions of them with white phosphorus bomb after white phosphorus bomb, and you’d barely make a dent. It’s why we all love bombing Palestine so much – small population, small area – you can really be cruel to those people! Completely fuck them over! Like, your bloodlust is going to be totally satiated after you blow three or four thousand Palestinian children to bits. But three of four thousand child Swifties? Mate, they’ll probably not even notice the loss. They’ll just keep marching forward.
Mitski fans though? The… Mit…skies…? They’re the extreme freaks that you need to watch out for. Oh you’re a Taylor Swift fan? That’s cool, how did you possibly come across the world’s biggest artist? But if you’re a Mitski superfan? You’ve made that extra effort. Maybe you’ve heard “Now I bend like a willow/Thinkin’ of you/Like a murmuring brook/Curving about you/As I sip on the rest of the coffee you left/A kiss left of you” playing in an artisanal coffee shop and it did things to you. Maybe your heart was pierced so absolutely when you heard “Moon, a hole of light/Through the big top tent up high/Here before and after me/Shinin’ down on me/Moon, tell me if I could/Send up my heart to you?/So, when I die, which I must do/Could it shine down here with you?” that your knees buckled and the order of loaded fries you were taking to table 8 scattered all across the floor of Nando’s. You don’t become one of the Mitskies by osmosis, some lyric would have triggered something in your brain like you’re a secret agent of millennial sadness and someone has uttered your code word. You’re also in your early 30s but still self-harm. Your friends are very worried about you. When someone upsets you there’s a significantly less than zero chance that you’ll announce your displeasure by setting yourself on fire in front of their house. That suicide bomber who took out a van in Bolan, Pakistan last March? Well, the bomber’s trousers weren’t too damaged to be searched by police afterwards and you know what they found? That’s right, a cassette copy of ‘Bury Me At Makeout Creek’. Mitskies are crazy, man. I mean, on cassette?
There’s a generation of Millennials who have been crushed by capitalism, who just can’t take any more of their lies, who are tired all the time and have finally accepted that the world nor the future has no good for them. Mitski is as important to those people as Josef Stalin is to me. More so, even.
Nah, less so.
I am not a Mitsky. I recognise what an incredible songwriter she is, I can see/hear what an incredible lyricist she is and can understand how people would react to her the way they do. I’ve just never felt that the songs themselves are quite there consistently enough, and the music she produces never knocks my bollocks off. I accept this might be because I haven’t seen her live in a few years: they’re such an astonishing live performer – especially for someone who by all accounts fucking hates it – that after coming out of her last gig asking people where the nearest place to buy light fluid was so I could show Mitski how much they meant for me and how our love was so much more real than the others. ‘
The Land…’ is a brilliant album, but it’s a brilliant singer songwriter album. I’m still waiting for Mitski to really blow me away. The moves into country rock make me appreciate Mitski’s versatility, but the music itself isn’t brilliant enough to escape how unspectacular it occasionally sounds. There’s a bit 2:50 in The Deal where the drum machine sputters into something of a crescendo before the song collapses into strings, that just destoys my very soul. And that’s the sort of musical trickery that I’d like to see more of in the future. Or more songs that kick ass, you know?
Come on Mitski. I demand it. This is what you’ve signed up for. Cater your pain towards your audience. When’s your next album out? Been months since you released this.
Finally, starting to find some consistency. Jesus, Mitski, you were all over the place for a while!
Necessary Evil 