Mitski brings out her theatrical side at Hammersmith Apollo — review
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Unwelcome behaviour was on display at Hammersmith Apollo. Fans filmed Mitski’s London performance on phones, in contravention of the Nashville-based singer’s request during her 2022 tour. Anonymous cries of “I love you!” pierced the silence between songs like Cupid’s arrows. In the past, Mitski accepted these tokens of adoration in the resigned style of St Sebastian. “You don’t know me,” she told one such admirer at a 2016 gig. “But thank you, I get that you really love my music, thank you very much.”
Almost all songwriters aspire to make songs that people love. Why else do it? But the reaction that their songs trigger lies outside their control. In Mitski’s case, she has found herself flung from minor-league US indie music to a more disorienting level of exposure. Her emotive but enigmatic songs have gone viral on TikTok and notched up billions of streams. A cult of sadness has been attached to them. “Every time someone on social media is like, ‘I can’t wait to cry to your new album,’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know if you’ll cry. I’m sorry,’” she told Pitchfork in 2018.
At the Apollo, for the first of four nights, she cut a more relaxed figure. “I love you too,” she told an adoring heckler. The phone-toters were allowed to video proceedings unhindered. Mitsuki Miyawaki, to use her full name, appeared to have found a solution to her unease at the fervour she inspires among her youthful fans. It lay in theatricality.
Her live performances have always featured a lot of stylised choreography. But her current staging — perhaps influenced by her work writing music and lyrics for a forthcoming Broadway adaptation of The Queen’s Gambit — goes even deeper into theatre. It has been choreographed with a regular collaborator, Monica Mirabile.
Flanked by a seven-strong band, Mitski performed most of the gig alone on a central circular dais, wearing a black minidress and knee pads. The handsome country music sound of her latest album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We was atmospherically recreated by a double bassist, electronic organist and pedal steel guitarist. Songs were acted out, like when she fell to all fours and made like a cartoon canine during “I Bet on Losing Dogs”. She illustrated “I Don’t Like My Mind”’s tale of being trapped in one’s head by miming banging on a wall.
Props included two chairs and the microphone stand, over which she sinuously draped herself from time to time. The light show was artful, with dramatic shifts in colour and clever use of spotlighting. Her languid vocal style added a dreamy emphasis to the stage movements. She sang as though mysteriously holding something back. When people hollered along to favourites such as “Nobody”, they invariably began a beat ahead of her. Fans and their idols aren’t always in sync — but this time there was no friction.
★★★★☆
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