Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier withouthope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what'struly hers, what can't be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. "The bestthing I ever did in my life was to love people," Mitski says. "I wish I could leavebehind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, allthis good love that I've created onto other people." She hopes her newestalbum, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine thatlove long after she's gone. Listening to it, that's precisely how it feels: like alove that's haunting the land."This is my most American album," Mitski says about herseventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing thiscountry, in all of it's private sorrows and painful contradictions. In this album,which is sonically Mitski's most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem tobe introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is timetraveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star.The album is full of the ache of the grown- up, seeminglymundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It's atiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory andsnow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to themoon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain,arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and thenrejecting us. To love this place - this earth, this America, this body - takesactive work. It might be impossible. The best things are.