Gone are the days of expectation and surmise with Mitski’s ‘The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’
In her seventh studio album, Mitski comes to the listener with her most mature and sonically expansive album yet.
Photo: Ebru Yildiz
It was believed that the critically acclaimed Laurel Hell in 2022 would be Mitski’s last release for a while, if not indefinitely. She was required one more album under her label contract, and the album felt like the last hurrah of Mitski’s music career, especially after her hiatus in 2019. Needless to say, fans were surprised when the very next year, Mitski announced the release of a new album: “I renegotiated my contract with my label, and decided to keep making records.”
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is a landmark album for Mitski, where we find her more intimate and untethered than in her previous discography, with honest disposition at the forefront of the project.
Buffalo Replaced is what Mitski describes as the anchor and guiding light for the rest of the album. It steps away from the softness of the steady Bug Like an Angel and opens with the rhythm of an old soldier’s march. The tone is set: a desolate field, an unyielding woman at the end of the world. Memories of tender affection, isolation, and suffering are flashed throughout the tracklist as Mitski stands at the edge of it all. Unlike her previous two albums, Laurel Hell and Be The Cowboy, Mitski leaves 80s disco synths and electronic drums and gracefully lands in the land of live sounds, favoring gentle guitars, benevolent strings, and spirited wildlife.
Mitski challenges the listener sonically, with ambiguous pace and delayed resolution. Through the album, rhythm is cradled like a baby: one that is sound asleep in your arms, but one that can also wail and flounder as you try to soothe it. The Deal takes place on Mitski’s walk through a dark empty street, searching for a hopeful patron of her pained soul. In the first chorus, she is frustrated, determined to rid herself of this soul, heard through demanding staccatos that drastically shift from the quiet strum of acoustic guitar from the first verse. A bird grants her wish by the time the second chorus arrives, and its ritardando and decrescendo leads to a more vacant atmosphere — one that is devoid of passion, but not of pain. As her voice fades, the rumbling drums and evocative orchestra gain command of the song, and just short of their peak, they fizzle out.
Although not unfamiliar to the occasional ballad, Mitski showcases an extensive, three-part evolution of her love in the album. Pedal steel and flourishing strings commence as she bends “like a willow” in Heaven; slow dancing in a private, intimate paradise with her lover. Through this, she writes the elegant My Love Mine All Mine, a love song to her own love. Sincere, moving with rich vocal timbre and sweet-tempered support from a warm choir and tranquil band, the value of the love Mitski holds grants herself the most touching ballad in her discography. She eventually is left to her own devices in the discordant The Frost, and no longer is able to give the love that she cherishes so deeply. It is lonely, dusty, and mournful despite its light, airy demeanour.
“You believe me like a god / I betray you like a man,” she scorns on the second-to-last track I’m Your Man, a song from the perspective of the patriarchal figure that resides within her. With cicadas, dogs, and crickets, the rugged ‘Yo-ho’s’ from the choir are accompanied by the bustling wilderness, with the track concluding on a terrifying screech from a Fowler’s toad.
Married are the grandiose and the old-school Americana to create an expansive, dynamic record that is dramatic and cynical, yet organic and vulnerable. Opulence takes over in When Memories Snow with epic brass and trudging drums making the shortest track on the album its most stately. She exclaims in solitude and with exasperation, “And if I break / Can I go on break?”.
Looking out, we find the paradox of a dead fly being immortalized on the bottom of a glass, a love that is long gone but burns bright out there and, ultimately, no one, and nothing. Hollowness surrounds Mitski, and she fills it with herself. A savant in songwriting and sonic composition, Mitski is able to deliver her most complex ideas and sounds yet without ever losing the attention of the listener. Though the land may not be hospitable, Mitski triumphantly wallows in her newfound independence and reclusion, “I’m king of all the land”.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is out now via Dead Oceans.