Album Review: Mitski – Be The Cowboy
By Madison Palmer
Montreal’s terrace season is starting to wind down. Leaves are slowly oranging, and the infamous humidity that has been hanging in the air over the past couple of months is starting to crisp up. The encroaching post add-drop lethargy is hanging over students, and they may be starting looking for the perfect soundtrack to accompany the upcoming gloomy fall days. Thankfully, Mitski’s new album can provide an end to that search.
Be the Cowboy is the Japanese-American artist’s 5th studio album, and is truly a gem sent down from the bedroom pop gods. Tying together atmospheric lyrics with relatively grungy rock guitar riffs, the soon-to-be 29 year old has been hailed as “the new vanguard of indie rock” and this new album —released August 17th— lives solidly up to this reputation, however it is at its core a very standard sounding indie album.
The standout songs are, obviously, incredible. The opening track, “Geyser” is, in my opinion, one of the strongest songs on the entire album. It establishes itself with a haunting synth that slowly builds up to a climax about 1 minute and 20 seconds in. The atmosphere of the song creates a feeling of bright optimism. This atmosphere is complemented amazingly in the closing track “Two Slow Dancers”, a song that not only saved the album for me, but also gave me a glimpse at what I wanted the album so badly to be. The song is contemplative, nostalgic, and just as lyrically and sonically powerful as the opener.
Everything in between these two are all —lyrically speaking— cookie cutter indie songs. Tracks such as “Old Friend”, “Nobody”, and “Blue Light” could easily have been left off the album and it would have no significant effect on the listener’s experience. The songs that stood out the most were the ones with actual unique qualities. “Remember My Name” and “A Horse Named Cold Water” are both incredible examples of this diversity; the former embodying the same college band feeling as the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack and the latter, opposingly, showcases stripped down vocals over a few piano chords. Even “Me and My Husband” (far from my favourite song on the album) is a jarring shift from the songs it sits between, adopting a noticeably more 2011 mainstream indie pop sound.
In spite of these qualms, Be the Cowboy is unquestionably a good album. All the songs blend together beautifully, and its length of 32 minutes makes it the perfect soundtrack to your fall semester study sessions to help ease you into the fast approaching midterm season and even faster approaching winter.
