The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We: A Lyrical Exploration of Mitski’s New Album

You can’t live in this house anymore. There’s more mold than grout between your bathroom tiles. The foundations are rotting and slowly sinking into the earth. You asked your landlord to do something about it, but apparently the termites eating away at your house are protected under some kind of Sensitive Species Conservation Act. 

“Cohabitation?” your landlord suggests.  

No more roommates, not with two legs, not with six, not with a million. Not after he moved out.

At night, you lay awake in bed, staring up into the darkness. “I don’t know what to do without you / I don’t know where to put my hands / I’ve been trying to lay my head down / But I’m writing this at 3 a.m.” (1)  Outside your window, you can hear the raccoons scrabbling through the compost bin, retreating back into their crawl space with their (your) spoils in tow. You hear the hairy wings of a giant moth beating against your window like a drum.

Your leaky shower head is leaking. You can hear that too, deafening in the night.

“When memories snow

And cover up the driveway

I shovel all those memories

Clear the path to drive to the store

And when memories melt

I hear them in the drainpipe

Drippin’ through the downspout

As I lie awake in the dark.”  (2)

It’s November already, and snow will come any day now. You have a recurring thought about your roof caving in on itself under the weight while you’re like mid-pee, pants around your ankles. This thought also tends to come with some morally conflicting feelings about global warming.

“When Memories Snow,” unfortunately, is unsuccessful at collapsing rooftops— emotionally speaking. It’s a different sound for Mitski, but you recognize that artists are constantly growing and evolving. The song sort of reminds you of how your ex-boyfriend/ ex-roommate said he was gonna fix that shower head for years and never did. That seems symbolic in some way. But the real beauty of Mitski lies in the way she is able to make the most mundane, “slice of life” images the saddest thing you’ve ever heard. 

You will never walk down a tree-lined street without looking up at the gaps of sunlight. You will forever think of the way she pairs this image with the line “I miss you more than anything” in “Francis Forever” on Bury Me at Makeout Creek (2014). Because of the way she so vividly describes dappled sunlight, it intensifies the gut wrenching pain of loss catching up to you on a sunny day in April. Because no matter the weather, you can not escape the grief.

“When Memories Snow,” on the other hand, doesn’t provide any of these melancholic truths. Mitski seems to have missed the mark on balancing simplicity and depth. It’s difficult to visualize memories as snow, because it lacks specificity and intention. The simile of “memories like snow” sounds like it belongs to the winner of Ms. Jackson’s 4th grade original poetry slam. Couldn’t she specify the type of snow (is it torrential? Canadian? powdery like sugar?) to metaphorically show the way memories are reappearing in her life?

The issue of “telling instead of showing” persists in “Bug Like an Angel.” You are told of Mitski’s drinking, you are told that when one breaks a promise it breaks them right back, told that Mitski has learned this lesson the hard way. (3) The sole image in this song is the opening line: “There’s a bug like an angel stuck to the bottom / Of my glass.”

There’s a slightly crushed gnat smushed against the bottom of a glass of water. You see it only when you lift up to drink, nose (your father’s, damn him) pressed up against the rim, hand leaving oil-slick fingerprints on the glass. You see it only through the clear base of the cup as you look down. For a moment, you cannot tell whether the bug is inside the cup or outside. It’s so close to your mouth. And the bug’s wretched limbs are all gnarled, curled inwards like a miniature tumbleweed in a claymation old Western. One leg twitches.

He always said you were too critical and you would say what do you expect from a professional critic. Then he would say nothing and take his keys and go for a drive. On those nights you laid awake in bed, suppressing your uncontrollable sobs just enough to listen for the sound of the garage door. 

“You’re an angel, I’m a dog

Or you’re a dog and I’m your man

You believe me like a god

I destroy you like I am

I’m sorry I’m the one you love

No one will ever love me like you again

So, when you leave me, I should die

I deserve it, don’t I?” (4)

This one’s good. No more criticisms. You have always been a dog and he has always been a man. You accept this now. Man and dog, it never works out. He always spoke in a croony whisper, rubbing your back and behind your ears. But dogs, they can only bark and only bite—they are still, at the end of the day, wild animals.

It’s getting colder each day. Your floorboards contract and whine. At night, you’re pretty sure you can hear the chewing sounds of thousands of tiny mandibles surrounding you. They are surely multiplying. You cocoon yourself in your blankets and wonder how much longer this house will belong to you. 

It feels less courageous to suffer when you are alone. The hardest part about a break-up is that no one can see how brave you’re being. Alone in your sub-zero bedroom, window panes frosted over, most mornings still rising. You are the winter and you are the climber, boot stuck in permafrost, there’s no one here to help you. You are “a witness watching it and [he’s] not there at all.” (5) It just feels meaningless.

“You’re my best friend, now I’ve no one to tell

How I lost my best friend

The frost, it looks like we’ve been left in the attic

But you’re not here to see.” (6)

“I keep dreaming about him,” you tell your friend over coffee. You are embarrassed.

“Is there anything strange about the dreams?” A fly lands on the rim of your friend’s coffee cup. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“Dreams are always weird.” 

“No, I mean like for example did he have both eyes? Because if he didn’t, that could be really symbolic.” 

In your dreams, he has the normal amount of everything. It is you, in fact, that is missing body parts. In the divorce, you got the house and he got your left foot. And now the house has turned against you and it’s looking more and more like you got the short end of the stick.

You limp back to your house, only to find its skeletal remains. Your house has been stripped bare except for its concrete support beams and your metal bed frame. There’s no way you’re getting your security deposit back now. 

Mosquitoes can enjoy me, I can’t go inside

I’m suckin’ up as much of the full moon, so bright 

Fireflies zoomin’ through the yard like highway cars (7)

There’s nothing left to do other than sit on your concrete stoop and smoke a cigarette. Your hands tremble, frost-bitten, raw against the flint. You’re aware that you look pretty deranged out here, flicking tirelessly at a dead Clipper, pink bumps already forming on your exposed ankles. Face naked against the cold, cicadas chirping, not sure how many days are left in the year.

Still, you’re here. 

Let the darkness see me. Through sporadic flickers of flame, let the darkness see you. Streets are mine, the night is mine. The fireflies begin to gather around you, butts glowing and blinking. Flick. Blink. Flick. Blink. The yard is freckled with millions of them, entirely in sync. The night is mine. Flick your lighter once more and the air in front of you sets ablaze.

 Let the darkness see me. (8)

Written by Michelle Johnson-Wang

(1)  “Francis Forever,” Bury Me at Makeout Creek. (2014).

(2) “When Memories Snow,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).

(3) Paraphrasing of the lyrics “I’m a drinker” and “Did you go and make promises you can’t keep? / Well, when ya break them, they break you right back / Amateur mistake, you can take it from me” from “Bug Like an Angel,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).

(4) “I’m Your Man,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).

(5) “I am a forest fire / And I am the fire and I am the forest / And I am a witness watching it / I stand in a valley watching it / And you are not there at all.” From “A Burning Hill,” Puberty 2. (2016).

(6) “Frost,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).

(7) “​​Buffalo Replaced,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).

(8) “I Love Me After You,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. (2023).