A spicy investigation by Erica
Photo Credit: Charlotte Patmore (Crack Magazine)
Mitski has been on hiatus for years and for good reason. The world is turning, the people are mad, and there’s sickness in the streets. With all that going on, the people were granted with one more album by Japanese American pop star Mitski.
To be completely honest was this Mitski’s best album? That’s up to you, and if you think yes then maybe you’re an unreliable source. Luckily for you, a mid Mitski album is equivalent to a masterpiece for some others (I’m looking at you Clairo). With the release of Laurel Hell, we must keep the girl "working for the knife" and send her out on a nationwide tour.
On 3.03.2022 I was plopped in the middle of a teenage hell that was the shrine auditorium. Me, a 23 year old woman who has had their fair share of concerts, was not completely sure what to expect. To me, Mitski is insane. No really, someone should really check in on her. In my silly little head I imagined girls screaming, pounding the floor, shouting in each other’s faces the lyrics of humility, grief, and heartbreak. What I was presented with was not entirely that.
The crowd was one cowboy hat away from being a complete Harry styles spectacle. Aside from that, parents were sticking like glue to their children, and for good reason, there were crazy people like me in that crowd. Personally, I am still coming off a high from two Turnstile shows at the Novo, and aside from that the typical concerts I go to I’m being pushed, stepped on, toppled, thrown, landed on…the list goes on. For me, this is the best part, the crowd interaction is just as important as the performance. Was I expecting a full on pit at the Mitski show? No, but at the very least I needed people to look alive, take up as much space in that crowd as possible, and go bonkers when that woman sang “please hurry leave me”. The most violet that crowd got was the preshow when they decided to bully the whites about singing Your Best American Girl, of course that energy was not kept during the actual song. What do you expect from Mitski listeners who shit post like their life depends on it.
Overall, Mitski is by far, a once in a lifetime artist. She is a true theatre maker in the ways every single movement on that stage has a purpose. Let's be clear: SHE WAS GREAT. Vocals, track selections, her band, all of it was superb. But with the power of TikTok and the grip it holds on the music industry (much like MySpace) it has brought a new crowd of people to her shows, they may not always get what she is exactly saying or doing, but at least they appreciate it. Some of the fans even believe they are besties, totally not weird AT ALL! :))))) Out of the nearly hundreds of shows I’ve been to at this point, the performer itself ranks at a 9.5/10. The venue was ok, 6/10, and the crowd…2/10.
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