LP - Black Vinyl housed in a Gatefold Sleeve.
Hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock following the breakout success of 2016’s Puberty 2, Mitski returns with Be The Cowboy via Dead Oceans. This is internationally-raised, much-travelled Mitski’s fifth album. 14 tracks recorded with her regular producer Patrick Hyland. The yearning drone of a harmonium, dreamy rich vocals over mournful organs. Woozy keyboards and haunting vocals. Melancholy folk-tinged tunes with a country twang, flashes of orchestral strings and even some disco-pop so you can dance to it while you cry.
The title of the album “is a kind of joke,” Mitski says. “There was this artist I really loved who used to have such a cowboy swagger. They were so electric live. With a lot of the romantic infatuations I’ve had, when I look back, I wonder, Did I want them or did I want to be them? Did I love them or did I want to absorb whatever power they had? I decided I could just be my own cowboy.” There is plenty of buoyant swagger to the album, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. The music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively up-tempo songs like “Nobody” where our cowboy admits, “I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss”.
The self-abasement of desire is strewn across these 14 songs as our heroine seeks out old lovers for secret trysts that end in disappointment, and cannot help but indulge in the masochistic pleasure of blowing up the stability of long-term partnership. In “A Pearl” Mitski sings of how intoxicating it is to hold onto pain. “I wrote so many songs about being in love and being hurt by love. You think your life is horrible when you’re heartbroken, but when you no longer have love or heartbreak in your life, you think, wasn’t it nice when things still hurt? There’s a nostalgia for blind love, a wonderful heady kind of love.”
Tracklist:
A1. Geyser
A2. Why Didn't You Stop Me?
A3. Old Friend
A4. A Pearl
A5. Lonesome Love
A6. Remember My Name
A7. Me And My Husband
B1. Come Into The Water
B2. Nobody
B3. Pink In The Night
B4. A Horse Named Cold Air
B5. Washing Machine Heart
B6. Blue Light
B7. Two Slow Dancers