Mitski Indesign Magazine

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Winter Issues 2023

First Album Mitski

Lush is the first studio album by Mitski. Released in 2012.

All About

Bury Me at Makeout Creek is the third studio album by Mitski.

Miyawaki

All The Album She has Made

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Table of Contents.

On The Cover

Burry me at Makeout Creek

Bury Me at Makeout Creek is the third studio album by indie rock musician Mitski, on November 11, 2014.

Laurel Hell

8

Puberty 2

Puberty 2 is the fourth studio album by indie rock singer-songwriter Mitski, released on June 17, 2016.

On The Cover

Lush

Lush is the debut studio album by Mitski. Mitski selfreleased the album on January 31, 2012.

Retired from Sad, New Career in Business the second studio album by Mitski.

Be The Cowboy

Be the Cowboy is the ffth studio album by Mitski, released on August 17, 2018, through Dead Oceans.

18 20

Burry Me at Makeout Creek

-a soft plea for a romantic escape, gaining momentum when she quotes Rezkinof and compares her lover to the breeze of Austin nights. “First Love / Late Spring” is a sweet-sounding song with the darker story of a frst love that carries difficulties. Te promise of frst love is juxtaposed with the fnality of late spring.

Acentral focus of the album is Mitski’s romantic relationships and the troubles they present. Opening with “Texas Reznikof,” a romantic song in reference to poet Charles Rezkinof, Mitski eases the listener into the heavier themes of the album. Te song begins with-

She explores the ends of a relationship even further in “Jobless Monday,” in which the honeymoon phase has been lived out. She sings, “Oh I miss when we frst met, he didn’t know me yet,” showing how time can be detrimental to relationships. “Francis Forever” focuses on feelings of inadequacy and codependency.

Burry at Makeout Creek

Ilove the grungy electric guitar she has playing as the main instrument for “I Don’t Smoke.” Te lyrics “If you need to be mean, be mean to me” really punch you in the gut, even if you can’t relate to them. Also “Carry Me Out” is a perfect mixture of crazy explosiveness, mellowness, and slowness. “First Love/ Late Spring” is one of the more happy, romantic songs, which is always nice to hear sung by her controlled, soft voice. It’s also defnitely one of my top fve Mitski songs, along with “Francis Forever,” and I fnd it interesting that the songs are so diferent despite being on the same album. (Are there kazoos in “Drunk Walk Home?” Sounds like it.) Tis difers from the past two albums mentioned, which follow a rather cohesive “vibe.”

Me Makeout Creek

“Sad”

and “yearning” can be used to describe the album but, once again, this is on par for every Mitski album. While songs like “Carry Me Out” and “Drunk Walk Home” make me want to head-bang the chorus, the way the compositions are organized somehow also makes me emotional and heavy.

I have no professional insight into complex music theory, but the way Mitski fts music together is so perfect.

“I used to think I’d be done by 20 Now at 29, the road ahead appears the same Though maybe at 30 I’ll see a way to change,”

LAUREL HELL

“Laurel Hell” explores Mitski’s conflicted relationship with stardom. She sings about feeling trapped in fame, about wanting to leave the spotlight but fearing aimlessness.

“I used to think I’d be done by 20/ Now at 29, the road ahead appears the same/ Tough maybe at 30 I’ll see a way to change,” she sings in “Working for the Knife.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mitski revealed that although she loves making music, she worries that it’s the only thing she is capable of doing. Tis insecurity, rather than the “Dead Oceans” contract, was the reason she decided to devote three years to “Laurel Hell.”

Darkness is a recurring motif in “Laurel Hell.” “Valentine, Texas,” the opening track, begins with the line,

Setting the tone for the rest of the album. She brings up the nebulous “dark” again in “Everyone,” where she admits, “And I left the door open to the dark/ I said, ‘Come in, come in, whatever you are.’” Te “dark” could be a symbol of Mitski’s struggles with depression while on tour. According to Mitski’s deleted tweets

“Let’s step carefully into the dark,”

LAUREL HELL

“Laurel Hell” is named for the rhododendron thickets of southern Appalachia. Campers who have come into contact with these thickets, which are referred to colloquially as laurel hells, describe the blooms as beautiful but the branches as thorny and extremely difficult to maneuver around. Stardom is Mitski’s laurel hell: she loves writing and performing music, but the sacrifces that come with giving herself completely to her art have the potential to destroy her.

“Laurel Hell” is a departure from Mitski’s traditional work. Te album contains some of her trademark slow, evocative pieces like “Heat Lightning,” a song vividly describing a night of insomnia and “Valentine, Texas,”

“Laurel Hell”’s emotive opener.

“Laurel Hell” explores Mitski’s conflicted relationship with stardom. She sings about feeling trapped in fame, about wanting to leave the spotlight but fearing aimlessness.

PUBERTY2

AsMitski Miyawaki’s “Puberty 2” begins, it forces you to wonder “is this the same Mitski material as ‘Bury Me At Makeout Creek?’” And the answer to that is “no.” Artists evolve for good reason, and that’s precisely what Mitski did between her last album in 2014 and “Puberty 2.”

Te frst track, “Happy,” begins with shuddering percussion and static as Mitski’s morose voice discusses how fleeting happiness is by personifying it in the song. She depicts a story in which she desperately attempts to convince the happiness to stay with her, singing, “I poured him tea and he told me it’ll all be okay / Well, I told him I’d do anything to have him stay with me.”

use of it when there’s no more you,” she admits to her dependency on happiness. Following the frst chorus, there is an interruption of near-blaring saxophone, adding to the new sound from an artist whose music typically fluctuates between loud, powerful rock and haunting, morose ballads.

Troughout the album, Mitski expertly balances themes of happiness and sadness. Te fourth track “Fireworks,” for example, is optimistic without negating the efects of nostalgia and past experiences on everyday life. Mitski sings, “One morning this sadness will fossilize / And I will forget how to

Mitski describes the emotion as a wayfaring gentleman caller who leaves her in the morning. With

LUSH

ush,” was released on January 31, 2012 as Mitski’s junior year project at Purchase College, where she was studying studio composition. Mitski stated that it was her most diverse album in terms of style, both rst and the songs were written at diferent times. “Bag of Bones” is considered her frst and was written when she was 18. Despite its scattered origins, I love how unrefned and raw “Lush” is.

A main theme of “Lush” is beauty. In “Liquid Smooth,” one of my personal favorites, Mitski portrays someone’s struggle for validation in a superfcial society that values them only for their beauty. Similarly, “Brand New City” talks about feeling dead and hollow inside yet being unable to let go of one’s looks. Mitski shows a common struggle between choosing validation or personal wellbeing. As someone who struggles with their appearance, listening to a song about someone with a similar experience is comforting.

LUSH

“Lush” also touches on gender roles, with the songs “Real Men” and “Wife.” Going of the titles, you can probably guess what each song is about. “Real Men” is about Mitski’s distaste for those obsessed with toxic masculinity. She deals with her own need for validation from these men while commenting on society’s problematic view of traditionally masculine behaviors. She contrasts this with “Wife.”

Mitski tells the story of an infertile housewife who feels like she has no purpose because she cannot give her husband a child. She is not a mother, but a nameless wife with nameless children who will never exist.

Although I have never experienced being forced into a gender norm, I have heard many offhanded remarks about it. Listening to the lyrics of these two songs have made me reconsider the impact that those comments have had on my perception of my gender.

Retired from Sad, New Career in Business

Te album was her senior project and featured a 60-piece student orchestra. Every song on the album, excluding Square, was accompanied by a music video, with each video playing a part in an ongoing story. In the summer of 2020, album track “Strawberry Blond” gained a resurgence in popularity on the social media app TikTok, specifcally in the cottagecore community.

For her sophomore LP, New York musician Mitski has revisited her lush orchestral sensibility with a more selfassured and direct focus. Te nine songs that make up Retired from Sad, New Career in Business are dynamic, ecstatic and anxious. Mixing out-ofthe-norm orchestral sounds with electronics and ‘found’ sounds, the songs are never what you expect but always feel exactly how they need to be. Each harmonic twist and turn, each unexpected structural shift is perfectly calculated and just right. Lyrically, the album, in similarly vague and poetic ways to her frst release, explores the anxieties and fears modern youth feel in regards to sex, growing up, and moving on. To go along with the album,

BeThe

Be the Cowboy is the ffth album by JapaneseAmerican artist Mitski, released on August 17th 2018 through Dead Oceans. Musically, though the use of traditional indie rock guitar and synth is present, synths are more prominent and there is a return to the use of horns seen on Retired from Sad.

-BLITZ-

Te choice to move away from distorted guitar was deliberate, because

create a signature sound.”

as well as there being an efort to “fgure out ways to pace a song that wasn’t reliant on classic song form.” Mitski has expressed frustration several times over the way that people assume

““that became something people recognized me for, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat myself or unintentionally

Be The

A strong artistic theme throughout the album is yearning for what cannot be had either because it no longer exists or never existed- notably, in Nobody and Washing Machine Heart, by making reference to movies (the music video of the latter featuring the character of a “Silent Film Star”). What is desired is represented by the highly glamourised fction seen in flms; Mitski has often talked about the strong influence flms had on her early life.

Her lyrics are as smart and heartwrenching as ever, but on Be the Cowboy we see more of Mitski the storyteller as she builds a specifc character- a woman who is perhaps wound a little tight trying to keep it all together on a stageas its star.

Together, the songs on Be the Cowboy tell a story of tension between control and confusion, its musical variations tapping into the multifaceted adult anxieties related

Aside from the heavy stuf, the album maintains a sense of buoyancy as it leans into the inherent campiness of performance. It’s fun to listen to, and just as fun to belt out along with.

I defnitely wasn’t thinking about the real working cowboy that exists today. I was thinking more of the Marlboro commercial cowboy, that incredibly exaggerated myth of the western cowboy.