Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like 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,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that 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 continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.
“This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star.
The album is 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, screaming in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

狂奔着，用速度划破漫长的黑夜，在数字与现实中，紧记真正的自己，就像一个狂热的和弦，怎么样的阴霾都无法遮挡眼中跃动的星星。拿起早已准备好的装备，一起扬帆起航，去向日葵盛开的地方。

天涯虽大，一个人无论走到哪，ta的身上永远会流淌着故乡的血液。有时，当终其一生对自我身份的寻觅看似漫漫无果，蓦然回首，答案或许一直就藏在最熟悉的街巷深处。
2021年，一张用川渝风情贯穿另类嘻哈创作的《巴蜀文艺复兴：第一章》开启了施鑫文月探索家乡成都的步伐。2022年，这位曾在美国求学多年的音乐人继续探访成都的大街小巷，与生活在此的人们近距离对话，并用一首首匠心独运的歌曲记录起这座城市鲜为人知的故事、面貌和声音。这是望江公子的忠实听众们等待已久的《巴蜀文艺复兴：第二章》，也是施鑫文月迄今最诚挚、最妙趣横生的一张概念作品。
有人说，致力于将“新”与“旧”、“外来”与“本土”元素大刀阔斧进行融合的施鑫文月是一位野心满满的艺术家，但在9首歌之长的《巴蜀文艺复兴：第二章》上，施鑫文月却恰恰放下了自我，用敞开式的视角表达了对一方水土的恩情回馈。没错，《巴蜀文艺复兴：第二章》不是一张关于施鑫文月的专辑，尽管他独有的氛围与痕迹遍布其中——这是一张关于时代奔流中的巴蜀都市的专辑，尽管楼宇和社区模样不复从前，尽管传统正在被重新定义，但属于成都的温情与乐观从未变过，而这正是这里生生不息、代代朝气蓬勃的原因。
从庆云餐的胖哥，信鸽社区的老板，再到玉林跳广场舞的梅梅姐，省体的溜冰大爷，《巴蜀文艺复兴：第二章》中存储了不同成都人绘声绘色的生活方式与态度，以及他们共有的、对每一天的热爱。通过将民乐乐器实录、轻盈的合成器与一段段市民原声采样细心编织，施鑫文月为成都市井中那些看似不起眼的画面赋予了新的诠释；当电子鼓点遇上葫芦丝，实验旋律纳入乡土韵味，《巴蜀文艺复兴：第二章》的收听体验注定会是一程令你难忘的旅途。

End, the enigmatic new album by Explosions in the Sky, was inspired by darkness, but became a loud, dramatic, wild rumination on life and death. “Our starting point was the concept of an ending—death, or the end of a friendship or relationship. Every song comes from a story, or an idea one of us has had that we’ve all expanded on and made its own world. Maybe it’s our nature, but we kept feeling that the album title was ultimately open to a lot more interpretation—the end of a thing or a time can mean a stop, but it can also mean a beginning, and what happens after one thing ends might pale in comparison to what it becomes next,” says the band about the album. End is perhaps the “grandest” Explosions In The Sky album – melding the quiet restraint and crushing feel of their early recordings with the aural exploration and ornate experimentation of their later works (while incorporating their increasingly deep film and television scoring catalog).