In less than a year after her most recent release, Mitski has come out with a new album for fans to enjoy.
This Land is Inhospitable and So Are We came out in early September of this year. The album encompassed common themes in Mitski’s music– love, broken romance, and life– but this time a bit softer.
In Laurel Hell, Mitski explored her complicated feelings regarding herself, her lovers, and her life in the music industry.
However, in this new album she has matured. After considering her place in the music industry and whether to stay or go in her last album, Mitski has finally found her space.
One of the most important and most prevalent themes in this album is love, and loving softly. Rather than accompanied with harsh synths like in Laurel Hell, her new album is soft, with a slight southern twang influence over a beautiful symphony.
Mitski captures the feeling of soft love and loving all for yourself in songs like “Heaven” and “My Love Mine All Mine.” A jazzy orchestra supports her floaty vocals in both of these songs, making us feel the love she has for herself and others. Unlike her last album, these songs sound kinder, full of the love she wishes to express through her music.
However, Mitski still expresses the downsides to love too. In “Bug Like an Angel,” Mitski touches on the struggles of addiction, where she is caught in a loveless relationship with alcohol, disappointing her friends and family, but also herself.
In other songs like “The Frost” or “Star,” Mitski reflects on holding onto love, even when the one you loved is long gone. Although the person is not there for you to care for, all the love you have for them keeps on burning in your heart.
She then turns the love on to herself, in songs like “I’m Your Man,” where she is deeply loved but does not feel deserving of the love given to her. Mitski has always been very open about her faults in relationships, something that appeared several times in Laurel Hell, and yet again she admits to herself that even she hurts the ones she loves.
Perhaps one of my favorite tracks on the album is “I Don’t Like My Mind.” Even when dealing with love towards herself and others, Mitski still expresses her discomfort with herself.
The song also contains the interesting line, “[…] so please don’t take / take this job from me.” Although one could interpret this lyric in the symbolic context of the song, one could also say Mitski is really begging to keep her role in music.
She explores this more in “When Memories Snow,” where she sings “And if I break? / Could I go on break?”. Mitski has always struggled with the public eye, and is constantly learning how to balance that aspect of music with the joy she found in making it.
In Laurel Hell, she grappled with her indecisiveness over her work in the music industry, considering leaving due to all the stress and turmoil it caused her. But in this new album, Mitski has found her love for music again, and wishes to stay right where she is.
“The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” she says, reflecting on the album, “ I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.”
This is the love she seeked to capture in This Land is Inhospitable and So Are We. And through her soft vocals, symbolic lyricism, and sweet, southern symphony, so she did.
