The Frost

Album: The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, a lonely Mitski deals with that conundrum that comes with having your lover also be your best friend: If that person leaves, you can't tell your best friend about it. The song captures a melancholy feeling of being alone in a house after a split, the frost looking like dust on the top of the world, but no one to share it with.
  • Mitski and her producer Patrick Hyland went for a rootsy vibe on this song, recruiting a team of Nashville session players to provide it. Fats Kaplin, who also played with John Prine and Jack White, gave it the twang, playing pedal steel guitar, violin, viola and mandolin. The other players are drummer Ross McReynolds, piano man Brooke Waggoner, and bass player Dominic Davis (Hyland added guitar).

    "Patrick Hyland and I knew that we really wanted to draw from Americana, from classic country, from folk and old-time music, and we knew that we needed a band that was versed in those genres much more than I was," Mitski explained. "We wanted that live acoustic feeling to it, so the band and I rehearsed for I think half a day, and then the next day we recorded all the songs we would do together, and it was just it was perfect, they were such pros. I'm really happy with the result."
  • The song is part of Mitski's The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We album, released in 2023 two years after her music started blowing up on TikTok. There's another weather-related song on the set as well: "When Memories Snow."

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