A helpless, maybe hopeless tumbling into love is a terrifying thing. Mitski would gladly do so.
It’s drifting into a lucid dream. A waking dream. A nebulous, trembling light constantly flickering but never completely going out. Emotions flood like deadly rushing waters, but the stillness that follows leaves you in disbelief. Mitski’s seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, holds the disruptive nature of love at its core. Amidst orchestral arrangements by Mitski with conductor Drew Erickson leading the ensemble, and full choirs in tow at recording sessions in LA and Nashville, The Land… has the presence of a million stories connecting to nature, the animal world, mythological lore, and a strange sense of yearning. Love, in all its gorgeousness and ugliness, will never be simple. Or as Mitski puts it, it’s “the long, complex, deep love, that you can never get to the end of, that’s always evolving, like a person. And there’s just no end to it. It feels like space travel.”
Mitski’s tour includes a show in Austin tonight at Moody Center. Doors at 6:30 p.m., and the phenomenal Ethel Cain opens the show.
