Mitski review – unusual, enigmatic and utterly compelling

Usher Hall, Edinburgh
The indie artist deploys her songs like controlled explosions as she turns the stage into a cabaret, a circus, a cage

A curtain hangs centre stage, as if set for a magician’s disappearing act. Mitski, barely visible in a black dress and tights, gazes at it longingly before ducking behind it. Her silhouette is thrown on to the drapes, frozen like a shadow puppet, as she opens with Everyone, a muted track which speaks, cryptically, about the American artist’s relationship to music, listeners and dark bargainings of success. The song ends, the curtain drops, and the “show” begins.

Mitski Miyawaki is no stranger to theatrics – the indie rock musician’s live performances have grown increasingly conceptual since the break-out success of 2018’s Be the Cowboy and her subsequent three-year hiatus from the music industry. But this tour, in honour of her celebrated seventh album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, perfects her unusual, enigmatic, utterly compelling stagecraft.

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