The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is the title of Mitski’s latest album, released on Sept. 15, 2023. Mitski demonstrates loneliness in oneself, this feeling that we can’t live within ourselves, and the urge to long for something different. This weighty imagery isn’t anything new for Mitski; the alternative/indie icon is known for songs that leave listeners feeling as though they understand the deepest, darkest thoughts in her mind. The literal distance between Mitski and the listener may be substantial, but her messages resonate with even the ugliest parts of a person. Mitski knows who she is, and she helps people figure that out, too, within her music.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We was an album that was never meant to see the light of the day. Mitski planned to leave the industry after her album Be the Cowboy due to difficulties associated with becoming a mainstream artist, but she owed her recording company Dead Oceans one more album, resulting in Laurel Hell. Eventually, she created a new deal with the label, resulting in this new album and the much awaited return of Mitski.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We opens with an image of Mitski sitting at a bar looking down at her empty glass in the first track, “Bug Like an Angel.” On the bottom she sees a flattened bug that appears to look like an angel. This image sets up the album’s themes of loneliness, religion, and power. Her gentle voice is matched with a 17 piece choir at parts of the song where religion feels necessary to the singer. Mitski turns to faith on these tracks, hoping to have it help her overcome this loneliness despite faith never having been physically being there for her. This also emphasizes what she is trying to say while the blaring volume of the choir grows.
This album contains themes of love (“Heaven”), self-disgust (“I Don’t Like my Mind”), and memory (“When Memories Snow”), all while maintaining Mitski’s signature honesty that she is known and loved for. Everything we hear in the album feels like a page ripped out of her own personal diary.
For me, nothing stands out more than the tenth track, “I’m Your Man.” Returning to the theme of religion, she concludes this song with the lyrics, “You believe me like a God / I’ll betray you like a man.” Mitski is not shy of admitting her faults, which is seen previously in her track, “The Only Heartbreaker” of Laurel Hell. Here, she admits that she is the person ruining the relationship. The powerful images of her destroying the one she loves and subsequently apologizing for it by saying, “I’m sorry I’m the one you love,” shift the blame from her to her lover throughout the song.
On the concluding track, Mitski takes back her power in “I Love Me After You.” While slipping in and out of delusion, she thinks about the “king of all the land,” being an old lost lover. She roams the empty house naked and laughs in the mirror. In the resolution of the song, she realizes that “I am king of all the land,” leaving all the doubt and abandonment in the past tracks and finding the power she has been needing throughout this whole album in herself. This directly contrasts her opening image in “Bug Like an Angel.” “I Love Me After You” concludes with heavy instrumentals and humming that flows into banging, and then silence—the silence achieved after pouring her heart out over and over again into every track. She has realized her power and can now rest.
When discussing the album with dedicated fans, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. One fan stated, “…[it] tears your heart out and sews it back in.” Others comment on the album as a whole saying, “I love how cinematic and orchestral this album sounds, while maintaining her honest and vulnerable lyricism as found in previous works of hers.” More ominiously so, The Ringer comments, “…that to know Mitski is to never truly know Mitski at all.”
Mitski is a gem, one that sings about emotions and feelings that most people cannot put into words. Within hard times, we are reminded to remember our power and the forces beyond us that ensure us that we are never alone. Mitski, we beg you to not go away any time soon.
