Last year, Mitski Miyawaki released what will go down as one of the greatest indie rock records of all time, Puberty 2. It’s Mitski’s fourth full-length, but the first to propel her into the exciting mainstream current: Her outsider anthem “Your Best American Girl” was named one of the “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going” by New York Times Magazine, she’s selling out shows, playing Coachella on the Beyoncé day (well, she was before Beyoncé rain-checked for 2018)—heck, even Iggy Pop recently sang her praises on his BBC radio show.
This is justified buzz, as few musicians have ever illustrated the impermanence of feeling good, or bad, or anything with such vibrant accuracy. Her words are darts, simple but sharp. Her voice rumbles with gentle but cautionary power. Opener “Happy” describes an all-consuming visit from a fair-weather lover like it’s the short lifespan of a mayfly. On “Your Best American Girl,” the Japanese American musician belts her feelings of un-belonging with pain and pride as she realizes, “Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me/But I do, I think I do.” Some songs are volcanic bursts of energy (“My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars”), while others hang suspended in zero-gravity ruminative states spent “trying to fill the void” (“Crack Baby”). Puberty 2 doesn’t ride off into the sunset in a blaze of glory—instead, on closing track “A Burning Hill” Mitski recognizes that “I am a forest fire, I am the fire and I am the forest and I am a witness watching it.”
Nearly a year since its release, the Mercury spoke to Mitski about life post-Puberty 2, the way childhood prepared her for endless touring, the terror of even a sliver of celebrity, and being an unwilling “mom” to Twitter followers.