image from NPR website, which also has a good article on Mitski

When I knew I was going to participate in Hanspostcard’s Song Draft, I knew at least one song would be from Mitski, aka Mitsuki Laycock, aka Mitski Miyawaki. Hans himself first introduced me to her music. Her sound is fresh, the music has compelling elements (beats, instrument manipulation, chord progressions) to it, and her lyrics go deep into the psyche, sit down, and have a tea party. The issue, as it often is with having so many good tunes to choose from is choosing which one of them to share.

I knew a little about her music-making origins but wanted to learn more. At allmusic.com, Marcy Donelson says:

Born in Japan to an American father and Japanese mother, Miyawaki grew up moving between no fewer than 13 countries on multiple continents before eventually settling in New York City for college. She had just begun writing songs soon after getting her high-school diploma in Turkey (her earliest completed song, “Bag of Bones,” appeared on her first album). After enrolling at New York’s Hunter College to study film, she decided to pursue music instead and transferred to SUNY Purchase. It was there that Mitski made her first two records…

I was 99% decided on “Washing Machine Heart” but thought “A Pearl’s” lyrics were minimal but carried a greater density to them, although both dwell pretty deep. The thing about when a person gets into the headspace where they are rolling a pearl around in their head that keeps growing is that one can get trapped inside of the oyster, or it turns into a tumor or something. George Harrison warned us in, “Beware of Darkness” about “it can hurt you…” but then he goes on to say, “what is more, that is not what you are here for.” My interpretation of what’s going on with the character is they’ve suffered some kind of trauma that interferes with their ability to interact with others. The trauma (i.e. war) could be anything.

Like one of Roy Orbison’s mini-operettas, “A Pearl” packs a lot into just over two and a-half minutes. It starts with an almost casual electric guitar strum and Mitski’s voice. Enter low-key drums and bass. Then it starts to build to a crescendo that includes waves of electric guitar, followed by distortion of guitar and her voice, leading to an anguished howl. Once released, it slows back down to where it was in the beginning with a feeling of resignation and acceptance.

I posted about “A Pearl” on May 1, 2019: https://wordpress.com/post/tao-talk.com/4969

…Be the Cowboy is the fifth studio album by Japanese-American indie rock musician Mitski, released on August 17, 2018 … In a statement, Mitski said she experimented in narrative and fiction for the album, and said she was inspired by “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room.”… At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, Be the Cowboy received an average score of 87, based on 30 reviews, indicating “universal acclaim.”

Since it’s been awhile Mitski’s released an album, I went out to find current events. In 2020 she wrote a song, “Cop Car” for the horror movie, “The Turning.” In an article dated in October 2020 it said she is working on creating a soundtrack for a comic book called, “This is Where We Fall,” where a cassette of the music will be included in the hardcover purchase of the book. Paste Magazine said she released “The End,” one of the songs from it, in May of this year.

You’re growing tired of me
You love me so hard and I still can’t sleep
You’re growing tired of me
And all the things I don’t talk about

Sorry, I don’t want your touch
It’s not that I don’t want you
Sorry, I can’t take your touch

It’s just that I fell in love with a war
And nobody told me it ended
And it left a pearl in my hand
And I roll it around
Every night, just to watch it glow
Every night, baby, that’s where I go

Sorry, I don’t want your touch
It’s not that I don’t want you
Sorry, I can’t take your touch

There’s a hole that you fill
You fill, you fill

But it’s just that I fell in love with a war
And nobody told me it ended
And it left a pearl in my hand
And I roll it around
Every night, just to watch it glow
Every night, baby, that’s where I go
Just to watch it glow
Songwriter: Mitsuki Laycock

First published on Hanspostcard.