During quarantine, I spent my time the same way many others did: playing Minecraft and listening to indie pop garbage that I was so fond of at the time. Most of the music I was listening to makes me exceedingly embarrassed to even think about and throws my pretentions music nerd credentials into question, but one of the few albums I loved that still holds up today is Mitski’s 2014 record “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” 

Although a majority of Mitski’s other music is not something I find myself returning to, considering albums like “Laurel Hell” and “Be the Cowboy” are largely forgettable and inconsistent, “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” has endured as nothing short of a lo-fi slacker rock masterpiece. 

 “Bury Me at Makeout Creek” is by no means a revolutionary album. Mitski isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before. However, the thing that makes the record special is the way she is able to consistently take the sounds of slacker and noise rock and bring them into a pop framework.  

Don’t let the distorted guitars and thumping drums distract you from the fact that this is a pop album, and a really catchy one, at that. The choruses of songs like “Townie” and “First Love/ Late Spring” are infectious and will get stuck in your head for days, despite their less than positive lyrical content. 

“Bury Me At Makeout Creek” is also a contender for the best written pop album of the 21st century. Mitski is on her A-game when it comes to her songwriting, and delivers some of the most raw and intimate lyrics of her career.  

Most of the album lyrically is about identity, disfunctionality and unhealthy relationships, which is by no means new territory for Mitski, however the album contains some of her punchiest lyrics that have remained in my head since I first heard them. “I want a love that falls as fast as a body from a balcony” from “Townie” is the best example of this.  

The vulnerable lyrics are aided in their efficacy by the builds that most of the songs go through before eventually hitting their emotional climax with distorted guitars and some of Mitski’s best vocal performances of her career. 

I would hesitate to call “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” an “underrated” album, because two of Mitski’s biggest hits are found on its first half, but if you have 30 minutes and a few tears to spare, “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” is one of the most consistent and high-quality records to come out of the mid-2010s indie scene. 

9/10