For Mitski, love and death are intertwined within each other. Opposite ends of the spectrum, but equally inevitable. For every love song soaked in metaphor on The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We, there’s the bleak counterpoint. It’s an elegant and dignified balancing act coloured by self doubt and religion.
The album starts with ‘Bug Like An Angel’ where Mitski describes how her alcoholism collides with her religious beliefs. The misty guitar and piano foreground that uncertainly: if she’s suffered for so long, can God really save her? No clear answer is offered. The more textured rumble of ‘Buffalo Replaced’ flicks the focus outward to the natural world. Where there once were wild buffalo there are now roaring trains. The world might have changed, but Mitski doesn’t sound as mournful for the loss as you might expect. If anything, it feels like she embraces the cycle with fascination, a sentiment echoed by the confident, stately love song ‘Heaven’. There is comfort to be found in the status quo.
It doesn’t take much for that comfort to be shattered, though. Caught up in a vicious cycle of self doubt and desperately trying to bury old memories,‘The Deal’ has Mitski offering to sell her soul to the devil, but not believing it to be worth anything, she asks for nothing in exchange. The offer initially seems to be an empty shout into the void, but by the end of the song, the cruel reality sets in, the cacophonous drums drown her out, and she now has to live with the consequences.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s barely a flicker of optimism to be found on the album after that moment. Even songs that seem more hopeful in tone are underscored by the looming threat of death. ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ is easily the most romantic song on the album, but even that song can’t escape the inevitability that death will rip them apart, even as the hope remains that their love might outlast it. ‘Star’ plays in similar territory. Set post-breakup, Mitski is at least living in the hope that this persons memory might live on against waves of atmospheric swell and twinkling keyboards, although you never quite get the impression those thoughts entirely cure the inconsolable loneliness she sings about on ‘The Frost’.
My hope was that Mitski would end her album with a defined statement declaring her intention to keep moving forward, something she does to a degree, but the path ahead is hazy at best. When your poetry is so ambling, nonchalant and occasionally abbreviated, it’s hard to tell what’s being gained and lost. Ultimately, it makes The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We an album that gets swallowed by its own conflict. There are brighter moments, but they never offer relief. And with basically no hooks to speak of, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We ends up an album perfectly suited to quiet contemplation and nothing else.
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