Mitski was my first favorite musician. As a highschooler, she was the first artist I discovered independently from the adults in my life and bonded over with my peers. Since I loved her during such a pivotal time in my life, her lyrics, messaging, and instrumentation will always stay in my mind, no matter how much I listen to her nowadays. Her 2014 breakout album, Bury Me At Makeout Creek, endures as a career and sound-defining work. It’s a compact creation, clocking in at just over 30 minutes and ten tracks total, but it packs a punch that sticks with you long after you have pressed pause.
The album opens with “Texas Reznikoff,” starting soft, with finger-picked acoustic guitar underlining her pensive lyrics. About halfway through, her voice crescendos, and a screeching guitar interrupts the tranquility. This is the first time we hear this rock styling in her work, and it sets the tone for the rest of the album as well as the next steps in her career. The guitar is a throughline for the album, giving more power to her usual quietly emotional lyrics. The melodies are far catchier than her previous works, and the instrumentation is much fuller as well.
Mitski truly comes into her own, and while “First Love/Late Spring” may be the biggest hit off the album, I believe that “Drunk Walk Home” is most emblematic of the record, and more broadly, where Mitski’s career was headed. In the track, Mitski trades sadness for indignance without losing the tenderness that will always define her work. It’s raw, authentic, loud, and powerful. In “Drunk Walk Home,” and the album as a whole, Mitski finds the voice that would eventually top the charts and earn her the dedicated audience she has today.
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