Album Review: Mitski - Be The Cowboy

Mitski certainly isn't afraid of changes.

It might have been tempting to repeat the formula that made Puberty 2 a breakout success, but here her previous guitar-driven approach has been ditched as she and producer Patrick Hyland have concocted a new lush but somewhat saccharine sound. Despite the disco bass and perky synths, Be The Cowboy is in Mitski's own words "her saddest album to date", as the upbeat backing makes a jarring contrast to her themes of struggle and not belonging. The shimmery disco misery of Nobody is a great example; a golden roller-booted exploration of loneliness that's like a long lost cousin of Chic's Soup For One. It's not all despair though, as A Pearl channels Mitski's stoic spirit against tough odds, or the funeral gloom of Geyser which turns into a life-affirming crescendo. Mitski's storytelling is in top form as she squeezes everything you need to know into two and a bit minute, bittersweet vignettes.

Be The Cowboy is intimate but prickly; experimental but poppy. It's sometimes machine driven but always human and a hundred other contradictions at once — which is what makes Mitski the fascinating artist she is.