Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
OCTOBER! Crunchy leaves and warm coffee and leather jackets and Halloween. That’s the most wonderful time of the year, if you ask me. And for the occasion, I’ve got a fall-colored graphic, complete with some sparing mentions of autumn and Lisa Germano.
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 10/1/23
I went into The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We with my expectations low—as much as I like Mitski, I was prepared for another Laurel Hell that I didn’t necessarily regret listening to, but only came away liking about half of the songs. But I’ve seen consensus among diehard Mitski fans and people like myself, who know a handful of Mitski but nothing expansive—we’re all starting to agree that this album might just be her best work yet.
After several years of turmoil that saw Mitski on the verge of leaving the music industry altogether, The Land is Inhospitable sees her reclaiming a space for herself, while reckoning with the past that led her to silencing herself as she tried to endure the trials of being a musician in this creative climate. The whole album is full of some of her most grand, expansive soundscapes, more haunting and commanding than anything she’s produced in years. It feels like Mitski letting herself go, haunted by the multitude of ghosts and hounds at her back, but unleashing years of feeling and fury. Take this song, my personal favorite of the album (“My Love Mine All Mine” was a close second). As she describes a Robert Johnson-esque deal with the devil “on a midnight walk alone,” we discover that the deal was never to see her soul for fame or talent—it was for someone to take the burden of her soul away from her (“will somebody take this soul?”) The whole song is a harrowing plea for peace, no doubt taken from many sleepless nights. As ever, Mitski’s voice soars to meet every sky-reaching promise, unfolding like an ornate wedding dress with its ribcage-echoing depth and weight. And this song is the exact reason why I feel like The Land is Inhospitable is her most adventurous album yet. The instrumentals are truly mercurial, shifting from simple acoustics to an abrupt, all-consuming cacophony as the chorus kicks in, barely contained. And speaking of barely contained, can we talk about how beautiful the outro is? It’s my favorite kind of barely contained chaos, as though Mitski is scrambling to keep the battering drums and frantic movement under wraps before the song ends, but can’t help but let some of it pour through the cracks. I can’t help but be reminded of 1:53-2:34 of “Via Chicago,” with its moaning guitars disguising Glenn Kotche’s explosive outburst of drums. (It’s 100% worth putting a Wilco concert on your bucket list just to witness that live. Trust me.) And of course, it mirrors the line “your pain is eased/but you’ll never be free.” It always lingers.
Either way, I’m glad that Mitski is starting to heal, and that we have this excellent album to show for it. She deserves more than all the weirdos screaming “MOMMY” at her constantly. The horrific curse of making emotionally vulnerable music your brand, I suppose.
“Born For Loving You” – Big Thief
I’m still newish to Big Thief, but this song delightfully baffles me. I almost thought it was a cover—it seems simultaneously harmonious and out of place next to all of the other Big Thief songs I’ve heard. Somehow, I love that about this song.
“Born For Loving You” feels timeless in its warm simplicity. At its heart, it’s an earnest, folksy love song, plain about its intentions and the smile on its face. But it’s doesn’t bear that kind of earnestness that makes you cringe from the manufactured nature of it—there’s so much about this song that’s genuinely endearing to me with each subsequent listen. Adrianne Lenker frames the premise of the song in a tender collage of vignettes, from “After the first light flickered outta this motel/1991, mama pushin’ like hell/Tangled in blood and vine” to splashes of blissful childhood: “From my first steps, to my first words/To waddlin’ around, lookin’ at birds.” Every time I listen, I can’t help but imagine the fading graininess of old home movies, of giggling, squinty-eyed babies taking their first steps out into the summer grass as their parents follow in their footsteps, arms outstretched. Lenker delivers every line with a straining waver, with the band gently painting soft, acoustic brushstrokes behind her. It’s a song for peering out the car window at a sunset, letting the wind play with your hair as you think about all the things that led you to be here, right here, with the people that you love.
“The Darkest Night of All” – Lisa Germano
I know you’re all sick of me heralding the coming of sad girl fall since August, but since it’s actually fall now, I’ve got an excuse. Nothing says fall like a black-orange color scheme and some good, old fashioned baby doll heads.
After YouTube practically pied me in the face with this song, I couldn’t help but listen. For the first few times, “The Darkest Night Of All” felt like either an opening or a closing track. Turns out that I was halfway right—this song closed out her 1993 debut Happiness (touché), and even without knowing anything else from the album, this song does its job better than any other could. Even though it’s clear from the lyrics that she hasn’t nailed her darkly clever style completely, it’s evidence that Lisa Germano’s skill at crafting a vivid atmosphere was always there. This song couldn’t have been named anything else—it really does feel like watching a starless night from out the window, bleary-eyed and wishing for sleep to come. With its echoing, gauzy synths wrapping their arms around the track, it feels like the cool tucking of a too-thin blanket over your head. You can’t picture anything but sleepless darkness when this song plays. Germano’s younger voice, thin and breathy like tissue paper, can’t help but make me think of Julien Baker—I don’t know if she listened to her, but I can’t get the resemblance out of my head. Paired with Germano’s gentle piano playing and mournful accordions, “The Darkest Night of All” sits in a strange limbo between a lullaby and a dirge, cloaked in nighttime either way. And what a way to close out the album—the fading synths and her final whisper of “the night” like a secret in your ear?
Nothing like a new(ish) Snail Mail song to make my day. Even if it’s a demo, there’s nothing better.
Lindsey Jordan described “Easy Thing” as “a track that didn’t make the cut, but holds a special place in my heart.” And the more I listen to it, the more it feels like the bridge between her two albums. It’s bathed in a the cool breeze of autumn, lazily meandering around, anchored by Jordan’s plaintively plucked notes on the guitar. The lyrics meander over to the bitter, love-gone-sour malaise of Valentine (“making out’s boring,” “was there really something/or were we just drunk?”), but the delicate, meticulous guitar work reeks of the shining melodies of Lush. You could have placed this somewhere between “Stick” and “Let’s Find an Out” and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. And although I love this song dearly, I can see why it never made the cut; it doesn’t necessarily tread any new musical or lyrical ground that wasn’t already in Valentine—the same lost love, the same reminiscing. I could see why it would have gotten lost somewhere between “Madonna” and “c. et al.” But it’s a song that still deserves to see th light of day, but standing alone was the best choice for it to sprout. Now the only question left is where it’ll fit amongst the other Valentine demos on this EP.
“Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Yep. Time for an emotional shower. I didn’t think about the order when I was making the graphic, but this is probably the best possible palate-cleanser for the lethal Mitski-Lisa Germano beatdown. Am I not merciful?
Even though I’m always mad about how stingy the Hendrix estate has been with lending off the rights to his music (every day, I not only wish for a world in which the Doctor Strange movies were actually as weird as they were meant to be, but also for a world where Jim Hendrix was their soundtrack), maybe it’s for the best that the MCU never corrupted this particular rush of late 60’s, pure, classic rock straight to the soul. This one would’ve fit right into one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but again: I’m glad this song isn’t associated with Chris Pratt making some corny “it’s behind me, isn’t it…😳” type of joke after getting into some comical alien shenanigans. (Can you tell that I’m bitter about Marvel? No? Blame Disney. I’m suffering over here.) Either way, this song—and most of Jimi Hendrix’s body of work in general—feels somehow pure, like it came into being with every note in the riff already glitteringly mastered. I’ve used the “Athena bursting forth from the skull of Zeus” metaphor to death in reference to Super Furry Animals, for the most part, but if anyone else is deserving of it, it’s certainly Hendrix. The sound production feels thick enough to stretch my hand through, and each lightning-fast note ripped in the dazzlingly intricate riffs feels like the most intentional thing on Earth, just for a few minutes. It’s a 4:09 stretch of speedy blues that you can’t help closing your eyes and smiling along to. Jimi just has that effect.
BONUS: I meant to put this in last week…oops. Either way, boygenius released a gorgeous animated music video for my favorite track off the record, “Cool About It” (which I talked about back in April). The animations are by Lauren Tsai. Have a watch! (Who else is very normal about the fact that they’re releasing another EP on the 13th??)
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 