I’ve come to know Mitski as the princess of propulsive sadness, and her new track, “Your Best American Girl” doesn’t disappoint. Like most of her songs, it’s a slow burn running into a scorching, explosive chorus. Mitski slips us into the body of the song with a soft, unsettling hum before she starts singing in earnest. It’s as though she’s tossing up whether singing the song is a good idea at all, she’s far away, buried in her thoughts. Her voice is at first a cool, lucid trickle, telling us “if I could, I’d be a little spoon and kiss your fingers forever more”, and while on paper the meaning in this line is abstract, in the context of the song the words come close to being tactile, you can sense, if not feel, the intimacy of the line.
The climactic chorus does what Mitski songs do best, combining soaring melodies and chiming instrumentation with hissing, static distortion. It’s difficult to describe how the guitars sound at this moment, because you don’t hear them as much as you feel them. The easiest way is to think of how full your head feels in the calm after everything has gone wrong; they’re jarring and constant, a horrifying and numbing drone. Unusually for Mitski, this is the point in the song where her vocals are the most buried. I had to look up the lyrics to work out what she was singing when normally her voice rings out crystal clear. At first I found this a little frustrating, but after I had listened a few times it started to make sense. This is a song about being hidden, so far in the dark that you can hardly think to find your own way out. It’s an image of agonizing love, a love that is just out of reach. Singing, “you’re the sun, you’ve never seen the night […] but I’m not the moon, I’m not even a star” Mitski shows the simultaneous and incongruent desire to be seen and yet remain invisible. This makes her muffled vocals all the more heart wrenching.
With 2014’s “Bury Me at Makeout Creek” Mitski set up house in my mind as an expert musical seamstress. Her songs are flawlessly strung together, they move effortlessly, and they are always devastatingly beautiful. And, if “Your Best American Girl” is anything to go by, her next album is going to resonate with me in much the same way.
What I’m listening to:
Zayn- “iT’s YoU”: In spite of how stupid the title is, this is actually quite a touching piece from ex-boy-band-er Zayn Malik. I was initially unmoved when he performed the song on the Tonight Show because it seemed like he was singing too far up his register and couldn’t get enough force behind his vocals. But, upon further consideration, this song is actually pretty good for when you’re feeling a little fragile and you need a touch of mournful crooning.