Mitski at #1 on Brooklyn Vegan Top 55 Albums of 2023 (+ Plenty More High Road Artists on the List!)
Mitski – The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We (Dead Oceans)
Mitski’s never made the same album twice, and after returning from a hiatus last year with the dance pop-infused Laurel Hell, she’s changed direction again with The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. It’s full of grand gestures — an orchestra, a full choir of 17 vocalists — and even more satisfying payoff. Mitski is a master working at any scale, from the intimate to the epic, and she is at her absolute sharpest this time around. And like at her increasingly ambitious and choreographed live shows, she makes it look easy.
For all of its beautiful adornment, Mitski’s songwriting can be remarkably economical. She never belabors a point, trusting that the listener will get it and moving right on to the next idea. All of the songs on TLIIASAW clock in at under four minutes, and album highlight “When Memories Snow” is just one minute and 44 seconds of jazzy horns and piano that recall musical theater. Yet Mitski packs cinematic soundscapes into those small spaces. She also incorporates plenty of country twang this time around (after all, she’s Been The Cowboy), like on the cowboy ballad “My Love Mine All Mine,” which earned her her first Billboard Hot 100 entry (and TikTok virality). It’s just the latest stop on a years-long ascent that’s accelerated rapidly since the release of her 2014 breakthrough Bury Me at Makeout Creek. Nearly 10 years later it’s still impossible, and exciting, to imagine where she might go next.
boygenius, Feist, Joanna Sternberg, Ratboys, Model/Actriz, Slowdive and Sweeping Promises all also made the list!