The singer and songwriter's critical breakthrough and lone album for
Double Double Whammy,
Bury Me at Makeout Creek was
Mitski's first record to be written for guitar after a pair of piano-based collections that she wrote for school projects. Grungy, impulsive, and with memorably acerbic, vulnerable lyrics,
Bury Me at Makeout Creek (named for a line delivered by Milhouse on The Simpsons) was the product of a particularly exhausting period that had
Mitski presenting those projects and trying to complete her degree while working outside jobs. Her predicament is explicitly mentioned on tracks including "Jobless Monday," in which she doubts the affection of her partner at the same time that she "Can't afford to buy my food/Or the drive I need to go further than they said I'd go," and the marching class protest "Drunk Walk Home" ("F*ck you and your money"), a song that ends in repeated screams. First, however, she offers a transition from her previous work on the two-minute, poetry-quoting "Texas Reznikoff," which takes the form of a wispy acoustic guitar song to open the album before exploding into plugged-in cynicism halfway through -- with no looking back until the acoustic closer ("Last Words of a Shooting Star"). In the interim, she delivers swooping melodies and buzzing guitar on "I Don't Smoke" ("So if you need to be mean/Be mean to me/I can take it and put it inside of me"), adopts a mocking, '60s girl group approximation on "First Love/Late Spring" ("So please hurry, leave me, I can't breathe"), and on a highlight among passionate, frustrated highlights, draws on classic, tuneful alt-rock on the rebellious "Townie" while dropping graphic metaphors like, "I want a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony/And I want to kiss like my heart is hitting the ground." An auspicious if fatalistic label debut,
Bury Me was produced by
Patrick Hyland, who returned for
Mitski's later commercial successes, including her Billboard 200 Top Five debut,
Laurel Hell. ~ Marcy Donelson
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