Mitski

immediately i love this 1000x more than puberty 2 which i already thought was great

way to keep taking it to the next level mitski

feel like musicians are writing more sub-2 minute songs these days.

Molina, Pinegrove guy, Mitski...uh, I had others when I thought about this earlier.

joyce manor

One local guy that recorded some of my old bands albums had this theory that second verses and choruses should be shorter than the first ones because the listeners have already heard it before, he's kind of eccentric in terms of having a lot of these little philosophical rules and I don't really agree but I found it useful to think about in terms of cutting out the fat in songs or thinking about stuff that maybe didn't need to be there

Ha, that quote rules

To be fair I would listen to Mitski noodle for 45 minutes.

Yeah this is an absurdly good record

― Trϵϵship, Friday, August 17, 2018 4:30 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

re the theory that 'second verses and choruses should be shorter than the first ones ' i had never stopped to think about the structure of 'your best american girl' until a week ago and it's the most extreme demonstration of this imaginable. well, viz. verses, anyway.

This album v.v.good. I'm all for short albums, regardless of who's making them.

this album is really excellent

what are some of the consensus best tracks (i've named mine above)

To be fair I would listen to Mitski noodle for 45 minutes.

― Van Horn Street, Friday, 17 August 2018 22:47 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes please. As a "mixtape" or "playlist" or some nonsense.

Album is fire bops

Puberty 2 had that incredible run in the middle and YBAG is a crazy high peak but this album is much more consistently strong, imo

^^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXPxXBWsVk

her live show seems drastically improved for this tour

Ugh I was all set to accept this as a new direction and prepared to love it based on the reviews but it's all so stodgy.

I'm listening to 'Nobody' and there's a brilliant song in there trying to get out, but the way the band attack every beat of the bar with the same emphasis just traps it. The whole album feels stymied by these gallumphing arrangements.

The melodic choices!

― imago, 17. august 2018 14:44 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks for this! I started listening for this, and I think it kinda opened up the music for me. Thanks ILX, short incisive posts like this is why I don't leave.

Well, I don't get 'stodgy' as a criticism as the songwriting is so lithe and concise. All sorts of melodic and textural surprises packed into these intense little songs - nothing goes on for longer than it has to, and there's still plenty of elegance in the composition. Perhaps you mean that there isn't much time to relax - there's always something changing - and it makes demands on your concentration accordingly. Focusing on one of the louder tracks and extrapolating 'gallumphing arrangements' from a necessarily escalating and dramatic discopop vignette makes me think you haven't listened very attentively. The album is very obviously playing on the tension between vivid art-pop and immiserated garage brevity, and you've got to be able to handle both

I haven't heard her before this, I really like the slow songs and Nobody but with the rest, for me, they are gone before they've made any impact.

I'm all on favor of the short song structures and lack of repetition. It does make it tricky to grasp on to tracks at times, but repeated listens help.

Her voice, melodies, and chord progressions all remind me of Weyes Blood, so I'm not surprised imago is drawn to this.

Back in my rock band days in the 90s, we got to the point with our song writing process where we would mercilessly shave down and cut parts to avoid any unnecessary repetitions as much as possible. Didn't go quite as far as Mitski here, but I can very much understand that impulse to want to keep things as tight as possible and not lose an audience's attention. It got to the point where it was real tricky to convince everyone to try a song that was more vamp oriented, that intentionally repeated a progression over and over.

I've thought it was something like 'stodgy' before, but what I find now is that while the arrangements might feel like that, the litheness and conciseness of the songwriting and of Mitski's voice creates a really interesting wholeness.

This record is much more Weyes Blood-y than her previous stuff, yes - it had occurred to me

I'd be feeling the vocals and melodies if the guitars and drums (and keyboards sometimes, even on the gentler songs) didn't pound along in such a leaden way - like these songs would sound so much better if they weren't just bashing every beat of the bar like children. I can't work out if its a deliberate aesthetic decision or if it's just ineptness, I suspect it's the former and that's actually more annoying.

The album is very obviously playing on the tension between vivid art-pop and immiserated garage brevity, and you've got to be able to handle both

This doesn't really have much to do with the point I was making but hey.

I'm prepared to go full forensic in order to refute your actual post as lazy listening, but I'll probably need a musicologist. Where's Sund4r?

Haha, I'm stuck on a work call, but I've been waiting impatiently for it to end so I can throw this on and see if I can make sense of Matt's criticism.

I haven't listened enough to dial it up by memory, but my initial reaction is that it is a highly varied album that doesn't stay in place for long.

Matt DC is kinda right. The instrumentation isn't that rhythmically complex, I think, but the voice is adding a lot of variation. I definitely think it's an aesthetic choice, it makes Mitski sounds as if she's constantly straining against the world, or dancing across it's borders.

I can understand why someone would call this stodgy but then the whole genre Mitski operates in might be called stodgy? Matt, I'd be interested in hearing something in a similar vain but something you wouldn't consider stodgy.

This is a potential album of the year for me, it grows more on me than other Mitski records did.

She's very into these portentous chord progressions that land very squarely on the down beats with little syncopation, giving it all a slightly doom-y quality. Going back to Weyes Blood, it's very much the approach you hear in "Do You Need My Love", but boiled down to it's barest essence. I do think there's plenty of dynamic range across the album, but she really likes hits those quarter notes dead on. I associate that style with a lot of Beatles tracks like "Penny Lane" or "Getting Better".

I deal with the short, slippery-to-grasp songs by just listening to the whole thing as one big piece ... like Richard Buckner's The Hill or something.

Eventually, individual tracks will start to stand out.

So to go back to Nobody, the disco guitar sounds nice and rhythmic and limber, but good god those piano chords, those drums, just bashing away with equal emphasis on every beat, that's what I mean by gallumphing.

I like lots of similar stuff in this vein - Weyes Blood is pretty different IMO but there's a subtlety there that's absent from the arrangements here. The US Girls album as well, although that actually knows what to do with a rhythm section.

US Girls is totally and utterly a different everything to this

Lmao Mitski sounds absolutely nothing like U.S. Girls or Weyes Blood, and to make these comparisons is an absolute disservice to all three of these artists

I had a WB vibe, too

xp

Gee, sorry. I think all 3 will probably survive this highly tendentious display of subjective viewpoints by internet shut-ins.

Yeah I don't really get the WB thing. I don't think it's *that* similar to US Girls either but I was responding to Van Horn Street's question about stuff in the same broad genre that sounds less stodgy. It's not like I was comparing her to Jana Rush or Tifa or whoever.

she really likes hits those quarter notes dead on. I associate that style with a lot of Beatles tracks like "Penny Lane" or "Getting Better".

This nails it. I'm not keen on it on Beatles records but when I hear newer bands default to that rhythmic approach I just assume it's because they can't think of anything else do to. I don't think that's the case here but it still kills my enjoyment of the songs.

I have a lot of affection for that style, so I'm good with newer artists referencing it, but yes, it is a bit of a cliché.

it doesn't sound very good but i like her songwriting, most modern records don't sound very good imo

sounded p nice to me?? im not convinced yet the songwriting is as good as on pube2

her singing is *extremely* mannered...to me it's unrealistic to expect any sort of lithe agile arrangements around this vocal style. she also didn't use full band arrangements at all on P2, iirc everything was played by her or the producer. is it different on this one? that method of production again doesn't lend itself to much dexterity.

i think her project has its limits but based on one listen this record is more than successful within them.

i also think the stunted nature of the music and singing is part of the package, like the performative romance novel unbridled longing stuff is enhanced by doing the music this way

o me it's unrealistic to expect any sort of lithe agile arrangements around this vocal style. she also didn't use full band arrangements at all on P2, iirc everything was played by her or the producer. is it different on this one?

No. But I quibble about "lithe" and "agile."

i think i was just looking for the opposites of galumphing. her music is certainly squarely on-beat and i don't think it's supposed to be subtle--for what she's doing these are features not bugs.

holy fuck is a pearl incredible

Bit of an Elliott Smith vibe off it in the sense that it's extremely tightly constructed and constrained by the lack of live-band-ness. His songs too were very short.

If you really take in the full-bodied arrangements while letting the songwriting bounce you around the emotional register like paroxysms, I have no doubt that this album can be a powerful experience. The thing is that the songs demand that you are very easily enthused by that prospect.

Maybe it's me who is just emotionally stunted, but I never felt like anything here grabbed me and took me in. I felt like a had to submit in order to get on her frequency.