In spite of keeping up with the demands of an insatiable audience as far as releasing records go, the past few years have seen Mitski toeing the line of Frank Ocean–like reclusivity, sharing occasional blunt updates on her mental health (as it relates to being a figure public enough to be baselessly accused of unmentionable crimes) for transparency rather than going full D’Angelo. It was a bit of a surprise, then, when we received a contextless sound byte from the recording studio last week in which she revealed that she’s recording a new album.
It was maybe even more surprising this week when the formal announcement for the album—titled The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We—arrived, followed by the reveal of its first single “Bug Like an Angel,” in the fairly conventional album-rollout fashion via her label of nearly a decade, Dead Oceans. Based on a letter sent to her mailing list it sounds like she’s made the necessary changes to remain active in an industry that feels harder to exist in with every passing year, between shilling music on a platform that earns artists a fraction of a penny per play and self-promoting on a social media platform that gets significantly dumber literally every single day.
“Ultimately, I recognized that I really want to keep making music, and I’m willing to take the difficult stuff with the wonderful stuff—like any job, or relationship, or worthwhile thing in life,” Mitski shared in the letter, as noted by Stereogum, before explaining that she’d re-negotiated her contract with her label.
The new LP will arrive September 15, but for now you can check out a video for “Bug Like an Angel” below.
