Mitski, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
Album Reivew by Alexander Cain in Music Review World, 4.30.24
I was one of the many people who thought Mitski was done. Over. Kaput. Utterly and completely finished. Laurel Hell in 2022 was her farewell, her final fulfillment to the record company. In the LP’s opening track, “Texas, Valentine,” she describes herself as stepping “carefully into the dark.” It was a shame to see her go, given that I’ve always held a great deal of respect for Mitski, and was still waiting for her to make her first masterpiece, which I knew she was fully capable of, if only she’d get comfortable enough in her abilities.
The announcement for Mitski’s seventh studio album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, was unexpected and confusing, but she later explained that she was planning on making more records after renegotiating her contract with the label Dead Oceans. And good on her for doing so! But the question is, will she be okay? This industry has chewed her up and spat her out twice already, and she is getting older. How much longer can she do this? What will happen when “Mitski” is no longer one of the biggest names in the indie scene?
But with this new release, Mitski shows that she is fully capable of staying in the game, and not a bit rusty. In fact, this is the best thing she has made to date. And yes, I believe it to be her first masterpiece. What we find here is a gothic, uniquely American half-hour arrangement of pianos drenched in sadness, ethereal orchestral arrangements, hollow acoustic guitars, and melodies inspired by old spaghetti Western soundtracks. With ease, Mitski brings this all together, using her divine, breathy vocals and lyrics to propel this to a piece of something beyond just plain speculation about the human condition, but instead a vessel for infallible truths about it.
Mitski’s music has always addressed this illness, this curse of mortal living. Bury Me at Makeout Creek is the closest she has come to this kind of emotional viscera, but The Land pushes past the ledge that Makeout Creek stopped at, and produces the kind of vulnerability that her other contemporaries, such as Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift can only mimic. Still, I believe that Rodrigo, especially with the release of Guts, is destined for great things in the future, although I can’t say the same for Swift.
The opening track, “Bug Like an Angel,” is primarily composed of a simple acoustic pattern, with Mitski likening a bug at the bottom of her glass to a fallen angel, before she admits, “As I got older, I’m learned I’m a drinker / Sometimes, a drink feels like family.” Suddenly, from the acoustic abyss of the track comes a chorus of voices rumbling up, taunting Mitski with her last lyric: “Fa-aa-ah-um-ah-lee-ee!”
And this bug at the bottom of the glass, which is a striking analogy for Mitski’s own fall from grace, now drowning in the last couple of sips of whiskey, is not the first creature to appear on the album. The first side of the album is scattered with all sorts of unusual cryptids, prowling the sonic, inhospitable land, such as the mutant, “new” buffalo to appear later on the next track, “Buffalo Replaced.”
“I have a hope though she’s blind with no name,” Mitski says, describing the primal beast which leads an undignified existence, yet still “shits where she’s supposed” and “feeds while [Mitski’s] away.” The new buffalo is happy to be alive, so why isn’t she?
“I Don’t Like My Mind” hints to the roots of her troubles, where she describes working herself to the bone on Christmas, and in her exhaustion binging on a cake, only to throw it back up, a ghastly window into some of the anguish that inspired this record. “Take my job from me,” she begs in the last line of the song (the full lyric is “A whole cake, so please don’t take my / Take my job from me” which may be intercepted as wanting to keep the job, but I’d argue the double use of “take my” implies a reset in the statement. I include this since this has been a point of contention between myself and others).
The following track is one of the most overtly Americana-influenced on the track, with the orchestra conducted by Drew Erikson becoming its most overwhelming and effective as Mitski pleads, “And if I break / Could I go on break?” The song is one of the sonic climaxes of the album, bursting into a half minute or so or pure triumphant noise: horns, trumpets, woodwinds, violins…and all of it comes crashing down, the track ending on a silent note, giving us a few seconds to wallow in the darkness before continuing with the album.
“The Frost” is another American tragedy that comes two tracks later. Here we see Mitski at her very lowest, her most lonely. She observes, “The frost, it looks like dust settled on the world / After everyone’s long been gone.” A tangy, bluegrass guitar whines sadly as she goes on to realize, “But me, I was hidin’, or forgotten, the only one left / Now the world is mine alone.”
These songs, these odes to sorrow, weigh heavy on the listener, and exhaust the ears and mind. It begins to seem that there is nothing left to express on this record, that nihilism is the ultimate takeaway here, the final truth of the human condition. But like all great art that deals in sadness, there is a redemptive element in the music, something left to say. The song “My Love Mine All Mine” is one of the most achingly beautiful pieces of music to be released for a long time. Its sound is optimistic, but overwhelmingly oppressive, like a beautiful dream which threatens to shift to a violent nightmare. Mitski’s lethargic vocals are felt in the chest, and are sung with such passion, such affection, that the song lights up the record the way love lights up a dark world.
This is not the only love song on the album (“Heaven” and “Star” are also excellent tracks), but is the most brutal in its ability to turn a cynical listener to a hopeless romantic, to convince someone who has been hurt and scarred by the world that real intimacy could one day be possible again. We all long for a love so beautiful it could be immortalized in the moonlight, which Mitski describes here with painful articulation. “So when I die, which I must do / Can it shine down here with you?” In an uncertain world, where nothing is free, and nothing can truly belong to us, Mitski has found something of hers, and she wants the world to witness it for eternity.
The final track, “I Love Me After You,” is a necessary accompaniment to “My Love Mine All Mine,” with Mitski switching to practicing self love, which is something she has struggled with more than alcohol, disordered eating, or fame, although I suspect they are all connected. On this track, Mitski basks in joy at becoming a new person after getting out of a relationship, declaring “How I love me after you” in the chorus and finally ends the album with a realization: “I am king of all the land.”
The king of what land? The same inhospitable land that has tortured and handicapped her. Throughout the album, it is learned that there is no escape from this place, nor the human condition. The only way to survive is to find a light in the darkness, and for Mitski, that light is love, for herself and others.
The announcement for Mitski’s seventh studio album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, was unexpected and confusing, but she later explained that she was planning on making more records after renegotiating her contract with the label Dead Oceans. And good on her for doing so! But the question is, will she be okay? This industry has chewed her up and spat her out twice already, and she is getting older. How much longer can she do this? What will happen when “Mitski” is no longer one of the biggest names in the indie scene?
But with this new release, Mitski shows that she is fully capable of staying in the game, and not a bit rusty. In fact, this is the best thing she has made to date. And yes, I believe it to be her first masterpiece. What we find here is a gothic, uniquely American half-hour arrangement of pianos drenched in sadness, ethereal orchestral arrangements, hollow acoustic guitars, and melodies inspired by old spaghetti Western soundtracks. With ease, Mitski brings this all together, using her divine, breathy vocals and lyrics to propel this to a piece of something beyond just plain speculation about the human condition, but instead a vessel for infallible truths about it.
Mitski’s music has always addressed this illness, this curse of mortal living. Bury Me at Makeout Creek is the closest she has come to this kind of emotional viscera, but The Land pushes past the ledge that Makeout Creek stopped at, and produces the kind of vulnerability that her other contemporaries, such as Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift can only mimic. Still, I believe that Rodrigo, especially with the release of Guts, is destined for great things in the future, although I can’t say the same for Swift.
The opening track, “Bug Like an Angel,” is primarily composed of a simple acoustic pattern, with Mitski likening a bug at the bottom of her glass to a fallen angel, before she admits, “As I got older, I’m learned I’m a drinker / Sometimes, a drink feels like family.” Suddenly, from the acoustic abyss of the track comes a chorus of voices rumbling up, taunting Mitski with her last lyric: “Fa-aa-ah-um-ah-lee-ee!”
And this bug at the bottom of the glass, which is a striking analogy for Mitski’s own fall from grace, now drowning in the last couple of sips of whiskey, is not the first creature to appear on the album. The first side of the album is scattered with all sorts of unusual cryptids, prowling the sonic, inhospitable land, such as the mutant, “new” buffalo to appear later on the next track, “Buffalo Replaced.”
“I have a hope though she’s blind with no name,” Mitski says, describing the primal beast which leads an undignified existence, yet still “shits where she’s supposed” and “feeds while [Mitski’s] away.” The new buffalo is happy to be alive, so why isn’t she?
“I Don’t Like My Mind” hints to the roots of her troubles, where she describes working herself to the bone on Christmas, and in her exhaustion binging on a cake, only to throw it back up, a ghastly window into some of the anguish that inspired this record. “Take my job from me,” she begs in the last line of the song (the full lyric is “A whole cake, so please don’t take my / Take my job from me” which may be intercepted as wanting to keep the job, but I’d argue the double use of “take my” implies a reset in the statement. I include this since this has been a point of contention between myself and others).
The following track is one of the most overtly Americana-influenced on the track, with the orchestra conducted by Drew Erikson becoming its most overwhelming and effective as Mitski pleads, “And if I break / Could I go on break?” The song is one of the sonic climaxes of the album, bursting into a half minute or so or pure triumphant noise: horns, trumpets, woodwinds, violins…and all of it comes crashing down, the track ending on a silent note, giving us a few seconds to wallow in the darkness before continuing with the album.
“The Frost” is another American tragedy that comes two tracks later. Here we see Mitski at her very lowest, her most lonely. She observes, “The frost, it looks like dust settled on the world / After everyone’s long been gone.” A tangy, bluegrass guitar whines sadly as she goes on to realize, “But me, I was hidin’, or forgotten, the only one left / Now the world is mine alone.”
These songs, these odes to sorrow, weigh heavy on the listener, and exhaust the ears and mind. It begins to seem that there is nothing left to express on this record, that nihilism is the ultimate takeaway here, the final truth of the human condition. But like all great art that deals in sadness, there is a redemptive element in the music, something left to say. The song “My Love Mine All Mine” is one of the most achingly beautiful pieces of music to be released for a long time. Its sound is optimistic, but overwhelmingly oppressive, like a beautiful dream which threatens to shift to a violent nightmare. Mitski’s lethargic vocals are felt in the chest, and are sung with such passion, such affection, that the song lights up the record the way love lights up a dark world.
This is not the only love song on the album (“Heaven” and “Star” are also excellent tracks), but is the most brutal in its ability to turn a cynical listener to a hopeless romantic, to convince someone who has been hurt and scarred by the world that real intimacy could one day be possible again. We all long for a love so beautiful it could be immortalized in the moonlight, which Mitski describes here with painful articulation. “So when I die, which I must do / Can it shine down here with you?” In an uncertain world, where nothing is free, and nothing can truly belong to us, Mitski has found something of hers, and she wants the world to witness it for eternity.
The final track, “I Love Me After You,” is a necessary accompaniment to “My Love Mine All Mine,” with Mitski switching to practicing self love, which is something she has struggled with more than alcohol, disordered eating, or fame, although I suspect they are all connected. On this track, Mitski basks in joy at becoming a new person after getting out of a relationship, declaring “How I love me after you” in the chorus and finally ends the album with a realization: “I am king of all the land.”
The king of what land? The same inhospitable land that has tortured and handicapped her. Throughout the album, it is learned that there is no escape from this place, nor the human condition. The only way to survive is to find a light in the darkness, and for Mitski, that light is love, for herself and others.