Bury Me At Makeout Creek
by Mitski
Release Date: 11th November 2014
Tracklist: Texas Reznikoff / Townie / First Love/Late Spring / Francis Forever / I Don't Smoke / Jobless Monday / Drunk Walk Home / I Will / Carry Me Out / Last Words of a Shooting Star //
I've been listening to this album for
months, pretty much on repeat whilst switching between this, Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, Julia Jacklin's Don't Let The Kids Win and
HAIM's Days Are Gone. I felt it was definitely time to
write about it. The album's been out for a few years now, and since this album, Mitski's had a newer release - Puberty 2. However, this album
is still currently all I want to listen to.
Bury Me At Makeout Creek is delicate before she drowns the listener with sound
keeping them afloat with her vocals. There's an amass of sound, whilst her
distorted dirty guitar tones and feedback float through the album leading the
listener through her stories of content first loves who wear socks in bed,
which leads to the contrasting startling images in Townie, of a love
that 'falls as fast as a body from the balcony / I want a kiss like my heart is
hitting the ground'. The album’s full of love, identity, belonging and desire.
Whilst she’s searching for the right relationship, she’s doing it on her terms
where her body, even if fractured, is hers and only hers: ‘I’m not gonna be
what my Daddy wants me to be / I’m wanna be what my body wants me to be’.
The album consistently moves from
delicate, and content, to shattering distortion, both musically and emotionality.
Whilst Mitski moves from
content love to feeling trapped in a relationship: ‘please, hurry leave me / I
can’t breathe / Please don’t say you love me’. Bury Me At Makeout Creek
is full of power. The sort of power you find in individuals who push themselves
to keep going even when it’s mentally impossible. It’s an album full of love
and desire, yes, but it demonstrates female empowerment in all kinds of forms:
needing to be loved, wanting to be loved, being strong and empowered in
yourself and your body, finding yourself without the need of someone else or
with the need of someone else, having the strength to be yourself, having the
ability to demonstrate that ‘I am stronger than you give me credit for’.
Not only do the lyrics demonstrate this but
also the instrumentation. The music is full of drive and power. Through her
distorted guitar tones, a sound that is quite often claimed through the male
sounds of rock music and male guitarists, and she utilises these sounds so
well, with a drive and a musical violence that’s balance out by her vocals
keeping everything afloat amongst the distortion and feedback.
The raw energy that’s displayed in this
album and the power and confidence that Mitski displays in Bury Me At Makeout Creek creates
an unbelievable album. Do listen below if you haven’t had the change to
already:
