The art-pop singer performed at Jacobs Pavilion and presented her latest album The country is inhospitable and so are we. By Annie Nickoloff

Mitski shuffles across the stage, interpreting each song with a unique dance move. Sometimes she shakes like a marionette, sometimes she walks on all fours like a dog, sometimes she struts around with exaggerated jerks, à la David Byrne. A seven-piece band orchestrates the theatrical show, and I experience it all alongside thousands of other people in Jacobs Pavilion. Together we feel one of the last summer breezes of the year blow over us in the cool night.

A flashback: In 2017, I was sitting in a corner of the Grog Shop. It was a year after their fourth album Puberty 2that sold-out gig in Cleveland Heights for just a few hundred people. I was 23 at the time. I was living in my first apartment out of college. I posted much of my life on social media – and that night I posted a grainy photo of Mitski in front of the venue’s red curtains –

– and every time I see it, I think of tenderness and heartbreak and hearing her in that silent audience (a rarity in Cleveland) sing some of the most profound songs I’ve ever heard live.

We listened carefully. We wavered.

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That night seven years ago, I fell in love with their songs. And I fell in love with the songs that came a year later, on Be the cowboy (an all-time favorite album) — and four years later, on Laurel HellPoetry and nostalgia, as well as genre-bending instrumentals, shape the atmosphere of devastating indie anthems, slow-building, dark rock songs, synth-driven dance numbers and twangy Americana fun music – Mitski’s discography really covers it all.

And then she offered more, over 2023 The country is inhospitable and so are wean album with one of the most beautiful love songs of the decade with “My Love Mine All Mine”, a ballad now famous on TikTok.

She sings this song Tuesday night at Jacobs Pavilion in Cleveland, as garlands of shiny brass metal shapes descend around her and shimmer against the city skyline. She also sings other highlights: “Nobody” (can anyone BUT Mitski sing the word “nobody” 30+ times and make it sound so damn catchy?!), and “Working for the Knife” (a scathing anti-capitalist ode), and “First Love/Late Spring” (a flashback: this is the first song I ever heard from Mitski).

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And then flash forward: On Tuesday, Mitski moves confidently across the Jacobs Pavilion stage, dancing freely as if she were alone in a room. In addition to her artistic moves, her music is bigger now, with each new album garnering critical acclaim and billions of plays on streaming sites. Her show is bigger, too — detailed, color-changing lights, carefully choreographed spaces, a band that responds to her every move onstage.

Despite all the changes and all the time that has passed, the connection between Mitski and her audience feels the same as it did seven years ago at the Grog Shop. The audience is once again swept away by Mitski’s dreamy melodies.

We listen carefully. We weigh ourselves.

1. “Everyone”

2. “Buffalo replaces”

3. “Working for the knife”

4. “The Frost”

5. “The Deal”

6. “Valentine, Texas”

7. “I bet on lost dogs”

8. “Thursday Girl”

9. “Geyser”

10. “First Love/Late Spring”

11. “Star”

12. “Heaven”

13. “I don’t smoke”

14. “I love myself after you”

15. “Happy”

16. “My love belongs to me, all mine”

17. “Last words of a shooting star”

18. “Pink in the Night”

19. “I am your man”

20. “Lonely Love”

Encore:

21. “Nobody”

22. “Washing machine heart”

More photos from the concert can be found below:

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