Mitski is such a cerebral label that I didn’t expect to come away from their 2024 shows making proclamations that perhaps I simply wanted to see the best-choreographed tour of the year. But it’s true: His three-show run at Los Angeles’ Shine Auditorium was the kind of sudden, cutting-edge study in action that couldn’t be guessed just by listening to his data — the latest and greatest of which was last year’s rather heady “A The land is inhospitable and so are we.”
Just to be clear, invoking the choreography here doesn’t mean Mitski performed alongside a herd of backup hoofers, which might be inappropriate for a former indie rocker if it’s obligatory for pop stars, she might also be moderately rated at opposition to now. The dance is hers, all hers, as the singer spends her entire 90 minutes on stage striking poses and being moved by the music in a programmatic yet viscerally participatory way. You can tell it has a fair amount of David Byrne in it, almost never mind the fact that the two collaborated and shared an Oscar nomination for best song last year. Like Byrne, she can be a slippery person, but she’s on solid ground when it comes to rooting her live performance in dance.
Not that Mitski’s 2024 setlist wouldn’t still look great if she presented it in a still-life format of sorts. This latest album is a departure for her, with music that feels big and orchestrated, a little classic country and a lot of reverb, offering an almost haunting beauty. The songs sound like they were made to be played in the “Twin Peaks” bar or, barring that unreality, in a very large room, where the sound can jump a bit and you’re not quite close enough to decipher the code of their facial expressions. inflexible. The Sanctuary (where years ago she played the Expo Hall side, before moving into the big room) seemed like a perfect place to hear something so quietly masterful and kind of old-school.
And to hear some screams from a good old school teenager, because she has a fervent following, to say the least, and who looks extremely young in a way that also doesn’t make much sense to all the older fans who have loved her for more time. (Her bottom-end demographic explosion can be summed up in two words: Tik…Tok.) If you’ve been following Mitski’s shows, you might walk into a show in the middle of a major tour with some trepidation: Will individuals shout inappropriate expressions? of faerie love? (And then be embarrassed by everyone around you, and probably your entire Internet?) This can still be an ongoing concern, from experience. But at least at the center of his three Sanctuary reveals, the 6,300-strong audience belied their average age by appearing super-respectful, largely providing absolute silence when called upon and then sounding like a dozen jet engines at LAX at the end of each quantity. Young people are fine!
This rapt consideration and appreciation did not seem in any way dampened, or controlled by Mitski (sorry), by the fact that the singer often delivered the classics a bit in a different way than they might have been expecting. This means that some of the material that longtime fans are most familiar with has been rearranged to more closely match the style, or styles, of “The Land Is Wild and So Are We.” Her style could be described as American fashion meets the ghost signal of a 1950s or 1960s free-channel megawatt station. When I first heard the album, I thought I was so glad she changed her album’s producer previous, 2022’s synth-pop “Laurel Hell” by some new genius; the joke, of course, is that it’s the same guy, Patrick Hyland, because it almost always is. The two seem inhospitable to stasis, so they’ll likely change everything again for the next album. But while they’re touring behind this one — with Hyland as their musical director and guitarist, of course — they’re letting things come together for a while while they’re in that rich vein, though they’re not totally resisting having some of the “hits.” be as indie or synth-y as they’ve always been in their catalogue. It’s really perfect stability throughout.
How much fun they’re having with some of the rearrangements is most evident on Mitski’s new version, “I Don’t Smoke,” a 10-year-old chestnut. If you take a look at some of the setlists, fans tagged it as “I Don’t Smoke (People Model)”. Effectively, no. It’s more like “I Don’t Smoke (Hoedown Model)” – much more country than anything on her last album (or Beyoncé’s). This is a big exception to the set, but a welcome one. Many other moments rely on Mitski’s Patsy Cline leanings to a much more subtle degree, though the amount of pedal metal, fiddle, and accordion playing by Nashville alt-country veteran Fat Kaplan, the ace of his seven-piece band, is revealing about where this sphere of influences resides. And for those who don’t just like country touches? No problem – there’s still plenty of familiarity in this set for all returning fans, whether she’s synthesizing early on with “Working for the Knife” or reviving her more twee rocker ways to close out the encore with “Washing Machine Heart.” .”
However, this isn’t a tour that comes close to being based on sound alone. So how Mitski takes the show further into art-rock territory with his visual presentation deserves a little more attention. The staging itself couldn’t be easier, except for yet another sophisticated set that appears in the center. At the beginning, two groups of band members are playing on either side of a very tall red curtain – four on one side, three on the other – and the expectation is that Mitski can be seen in silhouette behind that curtain, before it falls. . , as corny as it may sound. Well, that’s more or less what happens… but it’s only after the singer enters the stage, clearly lit, and appears in the veil that she’s about to take a step back. Take her symbolism about Mitski’s perspective on fame and host a business conference where you find it, there.
For the rest of the night, once the curtain disappears, the singer remains on a round, slightly raised platform in the middle of the stage, where her props include… two wooden chairs, used intermittently when she needs something to lie on and lean on. Stand against or stand as if you were jumping off a building. The second volume, “Buffalo Changed,” had her follow the robotic movements of alternately hiding her eyes with both hands and sticking them out as a sign to cease, something she maintained even during a long, awkward pause between the songs and at the beginning of the next one, “Trabalhando para a Faca”. Immediately, in that one, she abandoned the hide-and-seek routine and started focusing on fluidity, or the occasional go-go-girl pose. At one point, she turned to the audience and let her hands, wrists and arms form wavelike movements, much like the dancer in Bob Fosse’s “The Aloof” number in “Candy Charity.”
Much later, and with much less grace, Mitski dropped to all fours for, appropriately, group favorite “I Wager on Shedding Canines.” When Efficiency Can Make You Consider David Byrne, Roy Orbison, Bob Fosse It is dog-man Iggy Pop is clearly doing something right.
And that’s before looking at the two most seemingly staged moments of the present. In his Billboard Hot 100 hit “My Love Mine All Mine” and “Final Frases of a Shooting Star,” fragments of something — fake plexiglass? – descended by ropes from the top of the stage to his platform, then hung there for some time before finally climbing up, one by one, while his contact ordered them to go up. Should we consider these jagged edges as a kind of danger that could be marred only by Mitski’s advanced psychic powers… or magnificence in brokenness… or just elegant theatrics in a show that otherwise dispenses with it? Probably 6,000 different people, ages 15 to 25, in the Sanctuary had 6,000 different interpretations, and so did all of us scattered around, but we were all impressed by it.
But “Heaven” offered the sweetest moment, when Mitski danced, arm in arm (sort of), with the white beam of a suspended follow-pot. This is probably not as easily choreographed as it seems. (What did they say about Ginger Rogers, that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels? Mitski did everything the standout did, but backwards and made of physical matter.)
A night with Mitski won’t be a “getting to know me” night, at least on this tour (which returns to Los Angeles for a headlining show at the Hollywood Bowl on September 28). There was almost no dialogue, although the star seemed friendly and down-to-earth enough when he stepped out of actor-dancer mode to introduce the band or say a few words. She quickly crowned her opening comments to near the top of the set, concluding, “OK, no more chit-chat.” (There was something hilarious about his cheerful chit-chat enunciation, as if this were the worst thing that could happen in the present.) “Let’s fuck. go.”
And she or he did. No, it certainly wasn’t a live performance designed to envelop its adoring hordes in heat. But as an extremely theatrical show that also maintained the sense of a real, cold, warm person animating all that minimalist artifice, it felt sarcastically a bit…is that the right phrase?…hospitable.