Satomi Matsuzaki Greg Saunier John Dieterich Ed Rodriguez

Sometimes, Mitski feels life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” she says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will shine love long after she’s gone. That’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.

“This is my most American album,” she says. The music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. Sonically Mitski’s most epic and wise album, the songs introduce wounds and then actively heal them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like light from a distant star.

It's full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything and everyone is crying out in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning and then rejecting us. To love this place, this earth, this America, this body takes work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

Composer in New York

ryan@1oh9.com

Check out my band: therealdearleader.bandcamp.com

Dave Scanlon is a composer/guitarist. Scanlon is an active member of the experimental rock band JOBS (fka killer BOB), the avant-garde collective Pet Bottle Ningen, and the pop group Leverage Models. Scanlon has released music on New Amsterdam Records, Tzadik Records, Hometapes, Clean Feed Records, New Atlantis Records, and Primary Records. He has had the pleasure of performing at Jazz Art Sengawa (Japan), Sapporo City Jazz Festival (Japan), Incline/Decline (Canada), Pop Montreal (Canada), Hopscotch Music Festival (USA), SXSW (USA), Northside Music Festival (USA), and other festivals. He has performed at venues such as Issue Project Room (NYC), Roulette (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Shinjuku Pit Inn (Tokyo, Japan), Yokohama Airegin (Yokohama, Japan), Boston Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), Casa Del Popolo (Montreal, Canada), and many more. In March 2013, Scanlon was honored to curate The Stone, a not-for-profit art space run by John Zorn. Scanlon's writings on music have been published in Arcana: Musicians on Music VII. Scanlon has performed with Otomo Yoshihide, Elliott Sharp, Jessica Pavone, Hayashi Eiichi, Yamamoto Seiichi (of The Boredoms), Nonoko Yoshida, Steven Lugerner, Shannon Fields (Stars Like Fleas, Helado Negro, Leverage Models), Aaron Roche, Jason Ajemian, John Niekrasz, and others

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