Kitty Empire's artist of the weekMitskiReviewUnion Chapel, London
The Japanese-American auteur explores deals with the devil and future hauntings in an intimate church show that foregrounds her pure vocals
In blues mythology, the musician Robert Johnson met the devil at a crossroads and sold his soul to him in exchange for increased guitar proficiency. On the left-field pop auteur Mitski’s song The Deal – from her most recent album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We– the song’s narrator goes on a similar midnight ramble.
Keen to be rid of her suffering soul, she offers it up to the night, asking for nothing in return. A bird unexpectedly appears – her liberated soul, though analyses may vary – who archly informs her: “Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” Mitski is just “a cage” without the bird singing in it. On the studio album, released last month, a cavalcade of drums and a storm of groaning strings bear witness to how dire this deal is.
Tonight, on this low-key tour of smaller spaces, Jeni Magana’s foregrounded bowed acoustic bass and Patrick Hyland’s intensified strumming on acoustic guitar provide a surprisingly good approximation of the horrified crescendo. “There’s a deal that I made,” intones Mitski repeatedly, her pure voice rising into the ecclesiastical acoustics of this repurposed church.
This intimate performance consists of her newest album in full, plus a handful of old songs, all squeezed into an hour. It feels like a conscious retrenchment after the bigger venues, more epic sound and studied choreography of Mitski’s last two UK tours. And while tonight’s arrangements of the songs from The Land Is Inhospitable lack the wallop of the gospel choir, the sweetness of the pedal steel guitar and the stately brass and strings of the studio versions, this bijou gig is not short of intensity, both romantic and existential – or humour. Normally a reserved performer whose angst comes wrapped by in exquisite control and careful choreography, Mitski chats between songs – about loving the venue so much, she would like to “haunt it” after death. “Back into character!” she quips afterwards, resuming her slow pacing around the stage.
All performers make a deal of some kind with renown, of course. But Mitski – seven albums into a burgeoning career – has been more candid than most about the cost/benefit analysis of being an intense solo singer-songwriter with an ever-increasing army of ardent fans. Signed to an independent label, Dead Oceans, the Japanese-American music college graduate has come closer to the churn of the mainstream, and further from her original indie rock crucible, with every release.
Bigger audiences have brought her dividends, but this thoughtful artist’s ambivalence has kept in lockstep with her riseIt was the pandemic that accidentally made Mitski a TikTok phenomenon when her 2018 song Nobody captured the lonely understimulation of lockdown. Despite considering quitting music after suffering from burnout with her 2018 album Be the Cowboy, Mitski’s next LP, Laurel Hell, made overtly lush, synthetic overtures to a pop audience. Tonight, in the encore on the Laurel Hell song Love Me More, Mitski’s narrator demands to be “drowned out” by love. The request could be addressed to a romantic partner – or to a fanbase. The crowd, of course, plump for the latter, greeting it with ecstatic applause.
All these overtures towards bigger audiences – all these deals – have brought Mitski dividends: she opened for Harry Styles on his 2022 UK tour. But this thoughtful artist’s ambivalence has kept in lockstep with her rise.
A number of Laurel Hell songs critically editorialised her job as a performer. By contrast, one of The Land Is Inhospitable’s most skewering tracks, I Don’t Like My Mind, appears to come around full circle. “Please don’t take / take my job from me,” howls Mitski at its mesmerising peak. In a July statement, the artist concluded that, having renegotiated her contract, she would continue to make music.
In the weeks since The Land Is Inhospitable’s release, TikTok has once again got hold of one of Mitski’s songs – My Love Mine All Mine, a melody that sounds like a lullaby, but contemplates the insignificance of the human lifespan – and its Spotify streaming numbers have become decidedly pop: 3.39m globally. Mitski has been propelled into the UK Top 40 for the first time, then, seemingly moments later, into the Top 20. There are at least four separate Reddit threads analysing the song’s lyrics. Clairo has covered it. The UK Official Charts website – usually busy with Doja Cat and BTS – has reacted to this uptick with a piece entitled Who is Mitski?
The singer-songwriter herself makes no specific reference to Mitski mania 2.0 this evening, treating My Love Mine All Mine like any other song: with dulcet care. Cocooned this evening in warm guitar and resonant bass, she wonders tenderly if her love might endure after death, shining down like moonlight on “her baby” left behind on Earth (this is an album full of serene celestial imagery, contrasting with the “inhospitable” Earth).
As with her thoughts about whether her art is worth making, death is a frequent visitor to Mitski’s work. She concludes the gig with a short solo guitar encore from the pulpit and clarifies her previous thoughts about haunting the Union Chapel. If she died tonight, she says, she would die happy. This restless artist was able to do “her favourite thing”. And more than that, she says, beaming: “I am satisfied.”
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