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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And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood

Natalie Mering has been writing and performing under the nom de plume Weyes Blood since 2011. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is her fifth album in that span, but only the first one to make it onto the Top 31. Based on the way this album has landed squarely in my regular rotation, the absence of her previous four albums is 100% my fault.

Mering grew up in a deeply religious Pentecostal Christian family of the “born again” variety. (This is now the 2nd time religion has come up as a big part of the upbringing of the featured artist. I wonder how many more times we’ll see it.) Born in Santa Monica, her family moved around a few times before landing in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She left the nest and headed west to Portland for college and started playing in bands regularly. In 2011 she released her debut album as Weyes Blood, The Outside Room. She released a couple more albums in 2014 and 2016 and started to garner some critical acclaim. But it wasn’t until her fourth, 2019’s Titanic Rising, that that acclaim started to catch up to her.

She defines And In The Darkness as part two of a trilogy that began on Titanic. As mentioned in Pitchfork, part one “was a foretelling of catastrophe, and its follow-up is a dispatch from the center of it.” I’ve not yet been able to hear Titanic, but I aim to soon.

Mering’s voice hits in the same register as Aimee Mann, and a lot of the production throughout the album could be mistaken for Mann’s work — a high compliment in my book. Heavy orchestration and strong lyrical storytelling are found throughout. She’s lands at the intersection between Mann and Father John Misty (I would fear the power of that love child).

Her videos have a FJM-like tongue-in-cheek quality to them as well. In addition to “Grapevine” above, which features surreal and dark animated figures behind the performing Mering, she’s released another dark, surreal, and animated video for “It’s not me, it’s everybody”. I’m not sure if the style of these videos is indicative of all Weyes Blood videos, but they both feature blood so I’m inclined to think that’s an overarching theme.

Give this album its due – it sinks in deep and grabs your guts in a way that only a few albums can.

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26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#9 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Mitski

#25 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Weyes Blood