A Short History of Decay
One of my absolute favorite singer-songwriters returns after only a year. But by eschewing her recent synthpop (and other more experimental) tendencies, Mitski has created a lush, orchestral treatise on alienation and dread that easily stands as her best work in an already immaculate catalog.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Mitski
Chamber Pop
The probably inappropriately named “sad girl autumn” can begin, now that Mitski has graced us with a surprise new entry in the genre of “introspective melancholy in the guise of a pop album,” a genre with which Mitski is all too familiar.
The surprise is two-fold. First, that someone as obsessed with detail as Mitski could release an album this ornate in only a year since her last effort (my personal Album of the Year for 2022, Laurel Hell). The second, Mitski’s last album was so full-to-the-brim with disdain for music (the industry, the touring, the production hell, the parasocial fan relationships) that it was widely believed she might never record anything again.
So, color many of us shocked when the album opener, “Bug Like an Angel” was released as a single, seemingly out of nowhere, earlier this year. The song opens with a quiet, unassuming acoustic guitar. Mitski’s vocals are double-tracked in her typical style, singing, as is also typical, about something incredibly sad: “sometimes a drink feels like family.” A massive chorus comes in, making quite the jump scare, to sing in response, “Family!”
It’s the perfect entry into the world that The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We will inhabit for the next all-too-brief 32 minutes. It’s acoustic, it’s mixed warm and soft, but the feeling is still very powerful. This isn’t Mitski complaining about her isolation, it’s her trapping you in it.
And appropriately, her standard quietly discomforting lyrics are very much present, like “Buffalo Replaced”s “I have a hope and though she's blind with no name / She shits where she's supposed to, feeds herself while I'm away.” Or the soul-destroying first verse of “I’m Your Man”: “You're an angel, I'm a dog / Or you're a dog and I'm your man / You believe me like a god / I destroy you like I am / I'm sorry I'm the one you love / No one will ever love me like you again / So, when you leave me, I should die / I deserve it, don't I?”
Second single “Heaven” brings in a ton of Americana influence including the subtle jazz drum and a multitude of crying strings: lap steel, violin, and cello. There’s also a great deal of influence from one-time writing partner David Byrne (they co-wrote the Oscar-nominated “theme” to Everything Everywhere All At Once), and his band Talking Heads’ very own single, also title “Heaven.” To be clear, Mitski’s song is NOT a cover, but the parallels are apparent, including the themes of longing for a time when things were easier, better. But now that place only exists in memory, a memory that can, and most likely will, fade into oblivion.
The mid-album crescendo comes with the stunning “The Deal,” which features a Mitski mainstay: the highly detailed story that shouldn’t fit a song structure, but she miraculously finds a way. Here, Mitski is on a purposeful walk at the witching hour, looking to strike a deal for her soul: “There’s a deal you can make on a midnight walk alone / … / It will ask what you'd give and what you'd take for it in return.” But this is no ordinary satanic handshake and contract in blood. This Mitski is looking for any deal, as long as her soul is gone. The chorus changes time from fairly standard folk song 4/4 to a disturbing waltz, complete with detuned orchestra to maximize the eeriness: “I want someone to take this soul / I can't bear to keep it, I'd give it just to give / And all I will take are the consequences.” The conclusion hears Mitski sing, then begin to cry out “There’s a deal that I made,” over and over until she, and anything pleasant, is drowned out by crashing drums and static.
The album closes with a downtempo ode to self-care. The production is that of a hazy drone or dream pop dirge, but in it, Mitski stridently owns walking through her house naked. “Let the darkness see me / The streets are mine, the night is mine,” she croons, having finally come through an album of disquieting doubt and trepidation about the future and herself. “How I love me after you / King of all the land,” she sings before—surprise—turning the phrase into one of self-empowerment, singing “I’M king of all the land.” Her voice beautifully flits wordlessly over a massive swell of the only electric guitars on the album, eventually coming to blare at full shoegaze cacophony until…nothing.
In a “sad if you actually think about it” turn (which, I’m certain was done deliberately), Mitski’s self-actualization comes perhaps too late. She may be King of All the Land, but, remember… The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. In the face of the absolute destruction of nature, can one live a life without panic, or at best, ennui? It’s left for us, the listeners, to decide whether Mitski was being brutally facetious while giving in to the dreadful inevitability, or if she has a genuine desire to live fully and powerfully in the ruins of a dying world. At least, through this album, she has confirmed that she will remain with us until the very end.
