comprehensive album review by Zoe
Mitski Miyawaki, a 34-year old Japanese-American singer-songwriter, has released many masterpieces over the years. Out of all of them, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, is one of the most emotive and heart-wrenching albums she has released. That’s not to say its melancholic tunes have dragged down its popularity- quite the opposite in fact- with many of these songs becoming hits on social media and spreading like wildfire over the years. Today, we’re going to dive into the real meat and bones of this spectacular album.
The first song presented is called Texas Reznikoff, and within its lilting soft chords that become loud, strong, and harsh on the second chorus, you can read between the lines to see a story of a person longing for another, someone they loved deeply and miss daily. The quick change between peaceful strums to loud riffs shows the absolute desperation the singer feels and how much they wish their lover would return. “You’re the breeze in my Austin nights.” Texas is a very warm state, with Mitski saying her lover is a breeze in her Austin nights, she is saying they are a pleasant reprieve from an otherwise unbearable situation.
The second song is a fast-paced ballad called Townie that perfectly encapsulates the effervescent feeling of being a self-destructive juvenile that adheres to a rebellious mindset. In this song, Mitski speaks of growing up and becoming an adult and an individual. This includes singing about partying, drinking, falling in love, and intimacy between young adults. The entire song is filled to the brim with self destructive tendencies (i.e when she sings that “Somebody’s driving and he will be drinking, and nobody’s going back”) that range from partying mindlessly to throwing herself into violent love that will leave her just as unfulfilled as she was before (referring to the chorus where she sings “I want a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony”). There are also references to rebelling against what her ‘daddy’ wants her to be -this is possibly an allegory for men in general who’ve tried to control her.
First Love / Late Spring is a smooth song that touches upon the pain of feeling as if you’re both a child and an adult at the same time, flip-flopping between feeling as if you are playing with love and deeply entwined with the other person. The love Mitski feels for the subject of this song is so deep and so strong that it leaves her choking and unable to breathe; she even begs them to say they don’t love her, to solidify the casualness of their relationship rather than make it real and serious. One of the lines in this song is “胸がはちきれそうで”or “Mune ga hachikire-sōde”, which translates to “My heart/chest seems like it’s going to burst”. When all of this ties together, it paints a struggle that the singer feels with the seriousness of the relationship they are in, and the fear that comes with committing to someone and truly solidifying their connection.
The next song is a soft, dark ballad called Francis Forever that gradually elevates into a rushing interlude that depicts a forlorn singer who is mourning the loss of their lover, who seems
to have left the singer. She repeatedly states that although she doesn’t care about what others think, her ex-lover’s view of her is one of the most important things to her. Mitski is lost without them and is completely unsure of what to do with herself in their absence, and near the mid-to-end of the song, she completely breaks down while singing “I miss you more than anything”. This is not a love song, but rather a grief-stricken song that spins a story of broken love.
I Don’t Smoke is a song that anyone who has ever been in an unbalanced and toxic relationship can relate to. The comparison of smoking and being in love with this person implies that just like a nicotine addiction, being with this person is just as unhealthy and addictive. She acknowledges that even though it hurts, being with her lover makes the pain good, makes it worth it. Her lover is insensitive and cruel, but she takes all of their ire and internalizes it so she can be there for them. This is shown when she says, “So if you need to be mean / Be mean to me / I can take it and put it inside of me / If your hands need to break / More than trinkets in your room / You can lean on my arm / As you break my heart”. Even though the relationship is filled with pain and suffering, Mitski accepts it in return for her lover staying with her.
The next track is called Jobless Monday, a song that belies the blasé, apathetic feeling one gets when they are faced with the inevitable end of a doomed relationship. The tone and sound of this song is a steady, even beat with a noticeably less emotive voice track. This was not unintentional, and showcases the helplessness of the relationship between the two, and sets the mood for a depressing breakup that they both knew was coming.
Drunk Walk Home is one of the songs in this album that leans towards a more rock feel aesthetically, with rough sounds and harsh tunes that blend to create a jagged tune that fits together like a puzzle. It is also quite a short song that holds a lot of meaning jam-packed into a two-minute song with only one minute of voice audio. This song is a bit different than the others (although it still has heavy themes of hopelessness) because it focuses more on the fact that the singer, Mitski, will never be free from the capitalistic society she lives in. Themes of love appear as well, but the main theme of the song is that the singer has completely given up on ever freeing herself from the rigid rules that have been set by fate.
The eighth track is called I Will, which is a gentle song with a light-sounding soundtrack and melody that Mitski meant to write as a love song, but seeing as she didn’t have a love at the time, instead wrote about things she wished she could hear said back to her. There is a certain inherent vulnerability in this song, which shines through clearly once you really stop to pay attention to the lyrics. When Mitski sings, “I will take good care of you / I will take good care of you / Everything you feel is good / If you would only let you / I will wash your hair at night / And dry it off with care / I will see your body bare / And still I will live here”, even though it at first seems like she’s speaking to a lover or a friend, it becomes clear that she is both the one being cared for and the one doing the caring. It’s rare to see such self-love being reflected in Mitski’s work, so this song is quite a refreshing one.
Carry Me Out, like many of Mitski’s songs, gradually goes from a steady tone into a rising crescendo of sound near the middle to end. The meaning behind this song is a little more clouded than it was with the other ballads, but that does not make this one any less breathtaking than the
rest. The general consensus for this song is that Mitski is talking to someone out of reach, literally. This could range from a loved one who has passed to a spiritual being, but either way, the singer is trying to communicate with someone who is absent. By singing “Carry me out” repeatedly, a sense of exhaustion overtakes the song, and you can tell that the singer wishes to drift away, or to be ‘carried’ out of whatever rough situation she is currently in.
The last song of this album is called Last Words of a Shooting Star. It starts off slow, almost painfully slow, as the singer speaks of the ‘turbulence’ a ‘plane’ she’s on is experiencing. Using this as an opportunity to reflect on her life, Mitski sings about how relieved she is that she left her room clean, so that the people she left behind won’t think badly of her when they retrieve her things. They won’t know or understand the struggles she had been through, and as she believes she’s dying soon, she is content with that. She thinks of her lover, a disingenuous person who crafted their relationship into a facade, and feels nothing but bitter resignation. The ending of this ballad is what truly hits hard, when Mitski sings “I always wanted to die clean and pretty / but I’d be too busy on working days / So I am relieved that the turbulence wasn’t forecasted / I couldn’t have changed anyways”. That line is what pulls this haunting song together and finally reveals that the singer has been passively suicidal, and that the plane going down is something that would’ve happened anyway. Whether it was a plane crash that took her life or something else, her end was inevitable, and all she wished for was that her death wouldn’t be bothersome to those around her. Truly a sorrowful end to a beautiful album.
Overall, this album was a fantastic creation that showed the reality behind failed relationships, the fleeting rebellion of youth, and the inevitability of the end of many things we wish to hold on to.