By: Chris Pizzolo

We’ve got a blog, and this is our job. We’re supposed to ring the bell. We’re supposed to sound the hype alarms. In New York City if we see something or hear something, we’ve gotta say something. Well here we go.

Mitski is a recording artist who, similar to a lot of the North East’s recent highlight artists, is a SUNY Purchase alumni. Mitski Miyawaki has put out three albums, all beautiful in their own right, but her most recent, “Bury Me At  Makeout Creek” is a masterpiece. It’s songwriting genius, it’s production mastery,and completely heartbreaking and devastating. A lot of great music outlets and journalists have commented on the vivid imagery and clever lyrics that Mitski has penned on this album, yet few have talked about the album’s reflective tone, mirroring that of our human parenthetical life cycle, as told through journey of young love.

Starting off with the birth of love in Texas Reznikoff: “From the water from the home, that I’ve wanted to make…I want to be still with you”. The album establishes a yearning for a life dedicated to sharing your heart and earth with someone near and dear to you. The album subsequently travels through the life of love including its sometimes unmanageable obstacles:

“One word from you and I would jump off this ledge I’m on baby.

Tell me don’t so I can crawl back in” – First Love – Late Spring.

Ultimately the album ends with the inevitable demise, of both life and love in Last Words of a Shooting Star: “All of this turbulence wasn’t forecasted, apologies from the intercom. And, I am relieved that I left my room tidy, they’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things.”

 Mitski’s album is humbling, honest, and raw. There are aspects of traditional singer songwriter folk, yet genre bending fragments of surf-rock, psychedelic, and grunge. The guitars are often in Drop D tuning, and the drums and distortion deliver a knockout combination. If you’re unfamiliar with Mitski, start with this album and work your way backwards. Here at Play Too Much, we are pulling for Mitski, and hope this is album number three of a thousand to come in the future.

 Five stars, three thumbs up, and any other label necessary to urge you to buy this album.