#9 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Mitski

January 23, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski

Mitsuki Miyawaki, aka Mitski, had an eventful 18 months after the release of her sixth album, Lauren Hell. She had her first chart topper, when her song “The Only Heartbreaker” from that seminal 2022 album hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Songs chart in March 2022. She continued to struggle internally with everything that comes from being famous. She co-wrote a song with David Byrne (#15 in 2012) and Son Lux (#17 in 2013) for the soundtrack to the best movie of 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once. She got nominated for an Academy Award for said song. She chose not to perform the song during the ceremony, likely related to the previously mentioned inner turmoil related to being potentially even more famous¹. She and Byrne and Son Lux did not win an Oscar for said song, despite the movie taking home nine other academy awards. And she found the time to record her best album yet, her seventh, called The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We.

Miyawaki’s voice and tone remain unchanged on the new album, but everything around it has been beefed up. Subdued are the electronic-pop intonations of Hell, replaced by the warm embrace of a Mitski-led 17-person choir, along with a full orchestra conducted by none other than Drew Erickson, who arranged the big band feel of Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century (#9 last year) and the fantastic strings in Weyes Blood’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, (also last year, at #25). This album has a majesty unlike anything Mitski’s done before. Check out the choir, as featured in the video above, for the song “Bug Like an Angel.” The only other song she’s released a video for from this album is “My Love Mine All Mine,” a shorter, non-choral song reminiscent of a number of Father John Misty’s recent songs.

On my past two reviews of Mitski’s albums, Lauren Hell at (#18 last year), and her fourth album, Puberty 2 at #24 in 2016,² I’ve written a lot about how it’s taken me a long time to understand Mitski. “Understand” is probably not the right word – I can feel like I know where she’s coming from with her songs and what she puts out in the world, but I can’t really say I know her, let along “understand” her. But my brain has finally caught up to her music. She was so far out ahead of me, I couldn’t see her past the horizon. I’m still behind her now, but I’m no longer losing ground. Here’s to hoping she comes through town when I’m available to see her in all her gory. In the mean time, I’ll keep Inhospitable on repeat.

^{1. Stephanie Hsu, the young actress who performed in the movie and was nominated for an academy award as well, performed in Mitski’s stead.↩}
^{2. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for being so disconnected as to not even put her genre-defining fifth album, Be The Cowboy, in the Top 31 of 2018.↩}

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#22 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Nathan Johnson

January 10, 2022 by Royal Stuart

Mr. Corman: Season 1 by Nathan Johnson

Now we’re near the end of Act I, and our story is taking a major turn. ”Mr. Corman,” the Apple TV+ series, is an amazing piece of television. The single-season show (it’s been confirmed that it is not coming back for another season) was created, produced, directed, written, and starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a host of unexpected guests.

It is most certainly not for everyone — in fact, it may be just for me and no-one else. At the end of the roughly five hours of watching, I felt elated. The arc of the season into the finale was oddly compelling despite it feeling sluggish at times. But it’s stuck with me, it was so worth it, and I enjoy how the Soundtrack evokes key beats of the season for me.

Music features prominently throughout the season. Good songs you’ll recognize play throughout, but the original music, written by longtime Gordon-Levitt collaborator Nathan Johnson (cousin of director Rian Johnson), found on the Soundtrack is fantastic. Over the course of its ten episodes, what starts out normal takes many many unexpected audio (and visual) twists and turns: a musical number (shown above, featuring Debra Winger, who plays Gordon-Levitt’s character Mr. Corman’s mother); retired, grammy-nominated rapper Logic showing up for his on-screen debut as a social media influencer, along with a new song he came out of retirement to write just for the Soundtrack; and Juno Temple (Ted Lasso’s Keeley Jones) appearing as the main character’s ex-girlfriend, joining Gordon-Levitt as co-lead-singer. Everything combined to create the analog-but-digital musical conscious of Mr. Corman.

My love of the show is definitely coloring my opinion of the music. Mr. Corman’s struggles throughout the season are punctuated by myriad digital artifacts that evoke the computer-generated side of Sufjan Stevens or Son Lux. The Soundtrack floats through many musical genres due to the story of the show. And Mr. Corman makes literal music in each episode, a coping mechanism for being an anxiety-ridden 5th grade teacher.

Watch it, and stick with it. And listen. Perhaps like me you’ll find harmony in the world that Gordon-Levitt and his Composer Johnson have created. I hope that you do.

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23. Home Video by Lucy Dacus
24. I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico by Various Artists
25. Siamese Dream by Fruit Bats
26. NINE by Sault
27. Observatory by Aeon Station
28. The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania by Damien Jurado
29. A Beginner’s Mind by Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine
30. Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan
31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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#17 on the 2013 Musical Bacon Calendar

December 15, 2013 by Royal Stuart

Lanterns by Son Lux

Sometimes work by one artist sounds so derivative of another that you start to question its validity. Is this a pseudonym? Is this a result of past collaboration? Complete plagiarism? This is true of Son Lux’s third album Lanterns. I was not familiar with Son Lux’s work prior to this album, although I’ve since learned he’s got quite the storied past, such as having once been labeled “Best New Artist” by NPR’s All Songs Considered back in 2008.

The album I most easily compare Lanters to is the #3 album from three years ago: Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz. To my ear, the similarities are quite stark, especially on Lanterns’ peak, “Lost it to Trying,” featured in the video above. That song would fit right onto Age of Adz without any reworking needed. The rest of Lanterns has similar Adz overtones, hinting at an underlying dementia or sickness on the part of the performer.

That performer would be Ryan Lott, who is the one-man tour-de-force behind Son Lux. Lott’s even worked directly with Stevens, as part of the strange EP the two of them released with rapper Serengeti as the collective s / s / s. Did Lott have something to do with Adz, which came out a couple years before Beak & Claw, the single fruit of labor from the s / s / s collective )(although apparently another is in the works)? Unless Stevens admits to the collaborators he worked with on Adz, we’ll never really know.

The good news you can take from this is, if you liked Age of Adz, you’ll like Lanterns. Just pretend it’s a Sufjan Stevens album and you won’t even know the difference. Promise.

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18. Howlin’ by Jagwar Ma
19. Impersonator by Majical Cloudz
20. Dream Cave by Cloud Control
21. Mole City by Quasi
22. Phantogram by Phantogram
23. Julia With Blue Jeans On by Moonface
24. Uncanney Valley by The Dismemberment Plan
25. Event II by Deltron 3030
26. Wise Up Ghost by Elvis Costello and The Roots
27. Us Alone by Hayden
28. Pure Heroine by Lorde
29. Shaking the Habitual by The Knife
30. False Idols by Tricky
31. Let’s Be Still by The Head and the Heart

2012 Musical Bacon Calendar
2011 Musical Bacon Calendar
2010 Musical Bacon Calendar
2009 Musical Bacon Calendar