Amidst Mitski’s seventh studio album release, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, Mitski tackles a new country folksy sound with themes of love, loss, self-loathing, and divinity. After a careful listen through the 11-song album, sitting at a little over 32 minutes, here are the top five songs that resonated with me after a first listen.
“Heaven”
As one of the singles released before the album, “Heaven” was my favorite. Now, post-album release, it is still my favorite. What first drew me into the song was Mitski’s ever-powerful lyricism and the orchestral arrangement at the end—arranged by Drew Erickson, the orchestra, and specifically the strings duet’s Mitski’s voice that takes over the end of the song with feelings of nostalgia, death, and heaven. When I first listened, I thought the arrangement was very similar to Lana Del Rey’s song “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” after finding out Drew Erickson also helped arrange the orchestral music in that song, it made much more sense. Mitski’s “Heaven” is a well-executed exhibition of what it means to be in love through metaphorical analogies and sounds of melancholy but also ethereal divinity.
“I Don’t Like My Mind”
If you have ever sat alone with your thoughts and the memories you hate the most come to the forefront of your mind, you will understand the feelings in this song. The lap steel playing in the background gives the song a folksy country feel. It is a new sound for Mitski but is well-executed and emblematic of Faye Webster’s sound. Regardless, the lyrics’ in-depth view of self-loathing at the personal level, not liking your mind, and the attempt to suppress terrible memories, in a general perspective, gives us a glimpse into more of Mitski’s complicated feelings.
“The Deal”
In “The Deal,” the narrator pleads to a higher being, possibly the devil, to take their soul in an attempt to get rid of it, for it is too much for them to bear. There is almost this desperation in their pleas to give their soul away when Mitski says, “I’d give it just to give,” because of the lack of contentness of who their soul is or who they are. There are two ways I can seem to understand this song. I see the bird in the cage she describes at the end of the song possibly being her heart, possibly being her feelings. Still, the cause of her desire to release these from herself (the cage) is either a desire to get rid of the pain or possibly all the noise of her feelings. Regardless, the choice of crescendo and descrescendo of the instrumentation throughout the song really emphasizes the back and forth in making this deal and whether or not it was worth releasing herself her soul, and her feelings in the end.
“My Love Mine All Mine”
As her second music video for the album, there is more to use to understand this song and this album. Before the release of the video, Mitski took to Instagram to share some background on the track, saying, “To love is the best thing I ever did– the most beautiful thing… and I wish that after I die, I could at least leave behind this beautiful love in the world.” In My Love All Mine, Mitski describes what love is to her, what it has done for her, and how it impacts her life. She pleads to the moon to take all her love and share it with the world and those she loves after she dies and she is long gone. Several metaphors are trapped within the song, as Mitski usually does through her lyricism, occasionally bouncing back and forth from a first-person to a third-person point of view in her songs. Overall, it is a beautiful sentiment and a beautiful reminder that nothing we leave here on Earth matters, but instead, the experiences we have had, the connections we have made, and the love we shared with others– it is truly special.
“I’m Your Man”
This song gives me a weird anxiety-induced nostalgia. The barking dogs and crickets at the end are reminiscent of home and almost suburbia. Throughout the entire album, Mitski plays around with metaphors and sounds of animals, genuinely encapsulating the terrestrial analogies of “the land” in this album. The complexity of the lyricism of this song is somewhat confusing. There are interpretations of the song discussing the estrangement with a partner but also an understanding of the toxicity of idol culture. I resonate more with the idol culture interpretation as this is an ever-going discussion amongst fans of Mitski, especially after songs like “Working for the Knife” in Laurel Hell. Mitski reveals the lovers of the song, presumably her fans, idolize her like a God, forgetting she is as imperfect as man is because, after all, she is human.
In closing, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is a culmination of several thoughts and feelings Mitski expresses that is near and dear to her. Her use of metaphors throughout her lyrics gives any listener a chance to find themselves, their feelings, and their stories through her words and sounds of each of the album’s tracks.