AEA Sessions: Mitski

“…so the lyrics and the vocal melody are king in my songs. they always come first.” Mitski’s approach to songwriting begins from the ground up, with a deliberate vocal melody that manifests the vivid imagery of her words. “The way I learned to write was just writing things down on paper and hearing it in my head and kind of hoping for the best.”

Mitski is a singer-songwriter fresh off the release of her album, Puberty 2. The follow-up to 2014’s ‘Bury Me At Makeout Creek’, named after a Simpsons quote and hailed Best New Music by Pitchfork as “a complex 10-song story [containing] some of the most nuanced, complex and articulate music that’s come from the indiesphere in a while,” Puberty 2 picks up where its predecessor left off. “It’s kind of a two parter,” explains Mitski. “It’s similar in sound, but a direct growth [from] that record.” Musically, there are subtle evolutions: electronic drum machines pulse throughout beneath Pixies-ish guitars, while saxophone lights up its opening track. “I had a certain confidence this time. I knew what I wanted, knew what I was doing and wasn’t afraid to do things that some people may not like.”

In terms of message though, Mitski cuts the same defiant, feminist figure on Puberty 2 that won her acclaim last time around (her hero is MIA, for her politics as much as her music). Born in Japan, Mitski grew up surrounded by her father’s Smithsonian folk recordings and mother’s 1970s Japanese pop CDs in a family that moved frequently: she spent stints in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, China and Turkey among other countries before coming to New York to study composition at SUNY Purchase.