Mitski - The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We

 

Und schon wieder schlägt Mitski eine neue musikalische Richtung ein! Nachdem wir gerade erst verinnerlicht hatten, dass sie dem Indierock Lebewohl gesagt und sich dem 80er Jahre Synthpop zugewandt hatte, kommt „The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We“ als größtenteils in Nashville aufgenommenes, dem Folk und Americana nahe stehendes, düster-melancholisches Singer/Songwriter-Album daher. 

Mitski besingt auf 11 Songs und in knapp 33 Minuten die Liebe und die Schmerzen des Erwachsenwerdens, lässt dazu gelegentlich eine Pedal Steel Guitar erklingen („Heaven“, „My Love Mine All Mine“, „The Frost“), einen 17-köpfigen Chor erschallen („Bug Like An Angel“) und ein Orchester dramatisch aufspielen („When Memories Snow“, „Star“, „Heaven“). 

In den musikalischen Jahresrückblick gehört Mitski damit zwischen PJ Harvey und Feist und toppt bei Metacritic zurzeit sowohl „I Inside The Old Year Dying“ als auch „Multitudes“ (beide 85/100) mit einem Metascore von 91/100 Punkten deutlich.

„The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We“ ist als CD, Kassette und LP (black Vinyl, pink aster Vinyl, robin egg blue Vinyl) erhältlich.

The album is truly extraordinary – it is a once-in-a-career masterpiece that synthesises difference through abstracted self-observation. It is a vehicle for making meaning, an invitation to try again. 

(The Skinny)

 

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’s numerous emotional peaks, from “Star” to “My Love Mine All Mine,” are so moving that the listener may also be convinced that love is a light in a dark world, a pillar of fire in the wilderness. Indeed, Mitski’s ability to pack so many gut-punches and inspired ideas into half an hour remains uncannily impactful.

(Slant Magazine)

 

Through songs that often seem to have bare-bones arrangements, the album becomes increasingly intense. For its entirety, guitars, pianos and whole orchestras are lost in vibrating soundscapes, and drums are rare. On ‘The Deal’, a lilting ballad morphs into an apocalyptic whirlwind, while ‘Star’ is at once discordant and glowing, as complex and delicate as anything off ‘Pet Sounds’. Taken individually these songs are all gorgeous, but as a whole they create an effect of being hemmed in by absence, that inhospitable land overwhelming in its minimalism. No other record today sounds so beautiful and full while being quite so sparse.

(DIY)

 

The record can be as self-lacerating as any of Mitski's past works — the skin-tingling bar room swing of "I Don't Like My Mind," with its frenetic binging and sorry purging, is an early gut punch — but it holds a steady, wisened resolve at its core, an acceptance of solitude and ache that sets it apart from the rest of her catalogue. On stormy centrepiece "The Deal" — which moves in three keening suites before climaxing in a stampede of erratic drums — the night is a silent idol, one that extracts Mitski's pain in the form of a small bird. The titular deal has been made, but Mitski, much like Hans Christian Andersen's mermaid, realizes too late what she's truly lost in the exchange; "You're a cage without me," the little bird gently taunts. "Your pain is eased / But you'll never be free / For now I'm taken / The night has me." 

(Exclaim)