What happens if you let Mitski breathe? This single question seems to drive the singer songwriter’s new album, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We.” Returning after two years since her last album “Laurel Hell,” 33 year old Mitsuki Miyawaki presents an album that is both quiet and dreamlike, starkly different from the rest of her discography. Although this new direction presents a new frontier for Mistski and her audience, it can’t help but to perpetuate the same problems her other albums have, finally laid bare with the striped back instrumentals.
One thing that stays consistently great through the album is Mistki’s poetic lyricism. It remains the defining soul of the album as it deals with loneliness and longing for love. In songs like “the deal” or “heaven” Mitski paints herself as stretched thin, tired, and beaten. Her lyrics beg for comfort or hope free of the constraints of her own mind. She puts these themes bluntly in her song “I don’t like my mind” a song devoted to how trapped she feels in both her position in the music industry, but also her personal life and love. Although Mitski’s pain is laid bare through her lyrics, it also reveals a problem with her writing, her songs are over before they begin.
“The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” might be a breath of fresh air for Mitski, but it’s a hollowed breath. Her songs are all under three minutes long and only feature two verses and a repeated chorus connecting them. Although her lyrics are able to tell a complete story of longing and heartache, at the end of every song I am left wishing for more. Although Mitski uses slow, droning instrumentals she doesn’t give any time to let the listener sit in the soundscape she creates, instead she moves to the next idea with a feverish speed. When I felt like I finally was comfortable in understanding what Mitski was trying to create with this album, I looked down and realized it was already over.
Her previous albums had this same problem, amping up to a climax that just never lands correctly, but with the heavier instrumentals of her previous albums no song felt as hollow as it does here. Both lyrically and musically the album features ideas that are discarded before they can get good, leaving me with nothing to latch onto with this album but the empty space in between.
Mitski’s instrumentals never sore above her lyricism, and at times her music could feel clunky and dissonant. The first few songs on this album were particularly abrasive at times, with “Bug Like an Angel”, the first song on the album, being my least favorite song. Mitski’s voice is usually impressive but on this specific album I personally think she never tries anything too interesting with her voice, using it in the same way in most of the songs on the album with no variation. “Buffalo Replaced” is one of the stand out songs on the album, especially for having a good blend of music and lyrics, but the jarring out-of-place synthesizers used throughout the song really ruin the somber mood carefully crafted besides that moment.
A few songs really work in this style of music, specifically my favorites include “Heaven” and “My Love Mine All Mine.” Both songs use their somber moods to feel and compliment the hollow feeling of the rest of the album. The songs feel lonely and bare, like you’re walking through an abandoned mansion, reminiscing of the mistakes you made to end up here. It was a picture that I couldn’t shake through my time listening to the album. It feels like a warm cold, like Mitski herself was a ghost haunting her own memories.
The album feels like a ray of sunshine, it might be fleeting and intangible, but within its hollow halls there is something to enjoy, if only for a second. It is not by any means my favorite Mitski album, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t something interesting here. Mitski took chances and some of those chances I dont think paid off as well as she would’ve hoped, but it still remains a solid (if not a little bit simple) album.
