Playing country-inflected orchestral pop with sardonic wit and deep feeling, Mitski underlines why she’s one of the very best singer-songwriters working today
Miyawaki has a complicated relationship with fame. She withholds intimate details in interviews – one journalist was requested not to reveal the name of her cat – and retreated from social media in 2019. The same year, she announced her retirement onstage. She subsequently reconsidered, although a persistent online rumour suggested the ensuing album, her sixth, was another farewell.
But here she is, back with her record label and another album, albeit one that carries an aura of reset about it. The first thing you hear on The Land Is Inhospitable is tape hiss, followed by nylon-stringed acoustic guitar, redolent of the instruments on which people usually learn to play: the sounds of someone tentatively trying out recording in their bedroom. The whole album feels noticeably different from anything she has released before.
Mitski’s voice is usually tender and intimate, but has another mode, one suggestive of a woman raising her eyes skyward as she sings. She deploys it during I’m Your Man, leavening a song about the insidious destructive power of patriarchy: it’s leavened further by its conclusion, which features airy, wordless backing vocals and snarling dogs, like the Swingle Singers being savaged to death.
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