The title of Mitski’s seventh album prompts two notions: one, that the Japanese-American singer-songwriter has taken a leaf from the Lana Del Rey school of wordiness; and two, that she is returning to the state-of-the-nation territory of Be the Cowboy, her 2018 album querying Americanness and belonging. Neither is really the case, although Mitski’s penchant for classic Americana is musically front and centre – the lush, cinematic strings that play across songs like Heaven, or the pedal-steel wistfulness of much of the rest of this album, largely laid down in Nashville.
There are notions of a paradise lost in Buffalo Replaced, as a freight train screams across prairies where vast herds used to roam. But it’s the latter half of the title that looms largest on this moving, subtle record that rewards repeat listens. On The Deal, Mitski excises her soul and gives it to a bird; on I Don’t Like My Mind, her own brain is the enemy lying in wait. Her love, meanwhile, is like starlight on My Love Mine All Mine and Star – a light that will, she hopes, outlast her, as it does with the distant dead stars that still twinkle. Throughout, Mitski’s voice has never sounded sweeter or more exquisitely measured, even as she sings of protagonists vomiting cake, alcoholism (Bug Like an Angel), men, dogs, God and the devil.
