The Turning of Mitski

Mitski Miyawaki, who performs simply as "Mitski," is a singer-songwriter with several albums and a fawning New Yorker article under her belt.  We first saw her perform on March 8, 2015 at The Earl, where she opened for the band Hundred Waters.  At the time, she was touring in support of her 2014 album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, which we liked a lot.  

A couple months later, literally two moths to the day - May 8, 2015 - we saw her perform again at Atlanta's Shaky Knees festival.  After those two Atlanta performances in 2015, she released the albums Puberty 2 (2016) and Be the Cowboy (2018).  However, we started finding her songs, such as Your Best American Girl from Puberty and Nobody from Cowboy, while pleasant, a little too pop-leaning for our tastes.  They were well-written and had thoughtful lyrics - we'll grant her that - and she has a fine singing voice, but her style seemed to be turning more toward mass consumption than our peculiar tastes, and we basically stopped following her after those 2015 performances.

Our loss.  Here she is performing the song Happy on Austin City Limits, and between the  music and choreographed moves, she's almost approaching performance art.  

Mitski is to be ignored at one's own risk, and the worst that can happen if one continues to follow her through thick and thin is that you might get subjected to some polished, highly professional pop songs, thoughtfully composed and performed well, which isn't so bad.  The best that can happen is you'll catch performances like this.

Meanwhile, Mitski released a bruising new song, titled Cop Car, from the soundtrack to Floria Sigismondi’s upcoming horror film, The Turning. (featuring Finn Wolfhard, aka Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things, top).  We're glad to note that the heavy, gothey music and death-obsessed lyrics of Cop Car sound light years from the pop ingenue into which we had feared she might be turning.