Set against a backdrop of the glimmering San Francisco skyline and the towering silhouette of University of California, Berkeley’s Campanile, indie-rock artist Mitski performed one of the last shows of her “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” North American concert tour on Monday, Sept. 23, at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. The open-air concert revolved around Mitski’s most recent album release and featured a 90-minute setlist.
The show began at 7 p.m. with a half-hour set by country singer Wyatt Flores. Despite Flores’ charismatic vocals and charming guitar strums, he struggled to connect with the audience — most of the fans, still filtering in, hardly paid attention to his performance. However, Flores also peppered his setlist with covers of more famous classics, which inspired the amphitheater’s crowds to sing along enthusiastically in anticipation of the night ahead.
With Mitski’s entrance to the track “Everyone,” the ambiance of the venue shifted, immediately taking on a more intimate tone. As her vocals flowed through the crowd, the expansive Berkeley amphitheater paradoxically felt smaller, drawing the audience in. Through her setlist, Mitski deepened this sense of vulnerability with her raw, honest lyricism.
Mitski’s setlist, a compilation of 25 songs largely from her more recent albums, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” and “Laurel Hell,” blended together seamlessly in tone and aesthetic, creating a cohesive experience. Despite the inherent melancholy of her discography, Mitski’s setlist remained strikingly diverse — bleaker tracks like the resigned ballad “Last Words of a Shooting Star” and the desperate “I Don’t Like My Mind” were interspersed with upbeat remixes of tracks such as “I Don’t Smoke” and “Happy.”
To some fans’ disappointment, Mitski’s setlist skipped over many of her earlier hits, focusing instead on her current artistry. However, the few early landmarks she featured were met with warm appreciation, as throughout the amphitheater, the crowd responded by holding hands and waving lights.
The moments in between performances, though brief, broke up long strings of songs. Surprisingly, Mitski’s personality seemed bubbly, lovable and endearing — entirely different from the viscerality of her music. At certain points, she cradled an insect on the stage floor to safety and apologized cheekily to parents for introducing their teens to explicit language.
Despite her awkwardly charismatic personality, however, Mitski only interacted with the audience a disappointing three times. While her wistful discography and genre limit her ability to interact like other artists, it’s hard to overlook that her exchanges with the audience served merely as her introduction, intermission and conclusion. Even her stage sets were average at best — other than during “My Love Mine All Mine,” Mitski’s set felt more appropriate for a small indie artist than a celebrity averaging 28 million monthly Spotify listeners. Her costume was simple and the choreography involved no backup dancers — just her and the cryptic movements she displayed. Aside from Mitski’s charming stage presence, there was little to separate her performance from a Mitski-listening marathon on streaming services.
It didn’t help that most of Mitski’s fan base only engaged with three songs. With the exception of “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” “First Love / Late Spring” or “Washing Machine Heart,” audience reactions to other tracks were a brutal combination of one or two awkwardly waving phone flashlights, brief shrieks of surprise that quickly fizzled out and the occasional flash of a photo that lit up the theater. For a concert by an artist singing about the fragility of love, the crowd was surprisingly subdued — either they had been completely desensitized to heartbreak or they just didn’t know the lyrics.
Ultimately, Mitski’s performance lacked most of what an experienced concertgoer might look for — her costume was an uninspiring attempt at business casual; her stage setup lacked originality or visual appeal and her choreography was amateurish and at times even embarrassing. However, the absence of these elements allowed audience members to appreciate what mattered the most: the way Mitski’s character shone through her music.
Mitski’s concert may not have had the flash of its more flamboyant peers, but not every concert needs a mosh pit or an artist launching into viral dance routines to be great. In that sense, this concert embodies Mitski’s entire career, where introspection and the deeper meaning take precedence over trivial covers. Although most of the audience appeared to arrive at the Greek Theater only for the performance of a few hits, Mitski took the two hours she was given to weave even her more obscure tracks into messages that resonated with each attendee. Through her velvety serenade, Mitski was able to invite every member of the audience to connect their emotions with hers, creating a meaningful experience for all who attended.
3/5
