Mitski Kicks Off Tour With Stunning Stint at Fillmore Miami Beach

It can be easy to become jaded as a music writer—when you’re lucky enough to have access to lots of shows, they can quickly stop feeling like capital-E “Events.” But this was a big one, and it felt like it in advance. After all, we’re talking about a musician with just under 40 million monthly listeners on Spotify, ranked as the No. 75 most listened-to artist in the world. To put that in perspective: Phoebe Bridgers has just over 10 million. Boygenius has around five. And this show was taking place at Miami Beach’s Fillmore, a relatively modest theater that can accommodate roughly 2,500 attendees.

It’s hard to talk about Mitski these days without addressing how unexpectedly massive the singer-songwriter has become. In the years since the 2019 LP Be The Cowboy launched her from semi-obscurity to full-blown indie phenom, the cult of personality around the singer-songwriter has seemed to grow at an exponential rate. Amid that escalation, 2022’s lukewarm Laurel Hell gave way to last year’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, a cloyingly beautiful record that brandishes orchestral flourishes and puts the spotlight squarely on Mitski’s bewitching, theatrical vocal stylings, and one that allowed her star to continue rising. 2023 was a unique year in indie music, but perhaps its biggest surprise was the shocking crossover success of “My Love Mine All Mine,” an album cut from The Land… that garnered roughly half a billion streams on Spotify in the four-plus months since that record was released.

So when it was announced that Mitski would be kicking off her first proper U.S. tour in two years with two shows at the Fillmore, yes, it felt like a big deal. It’s safe to assume that she could have easily sold out a much larger venue if she’d wanted to, but the intimacy of a mid-sized theater does have its advantages for the opening night of a hotly anticipated production, for the artist and especially for the fans.

When the show began just after 9 p.m. with a folky rendition of the Laurel Hell album cut “Everyone,” there was a bright red curtain draped over a platform at the center of the stage, with a seven-piece backing band visible across either side. For anyone who’s attended enough concerts, it was fairly obvious that the star of the show was obscured behind said curtain, waiting for the right moment for it to drop from the rafters, leading to a big reveal. Of course, I should have known better. Midway through the song, Mitski wandered out from behind the curtain almost indifferently, nonchalantly gazing towards the curtain, admiring it for a moment before retreating back into the darkness and wholly subverting the expected triumphant entrance. Then, the reveal: a silhouette of the singer projected onto the curtain as the song reached its climax, before it finally dropped as the number came to a close, revealing her once again atop a platform at the center of the stage. Euphoric adulation ensued.

Leading up to the show, my biggest worry was whether I’d be able to clearly hear the music over what was sure to be a deafening response from an especially enthusiastic crowd. I was right to be concerned, but thankfully the seats offered by the tour for this review were right in the sweet spot—close enough to luxuriate in the mix but far enough away that not too many overzealous fans were seated behind. Yet I did find myself at times empathizing with those attendees seated so near the stage that the crowd response must have been blaring.

The set list had its fair share of highlights: slow-burner “The Deal,” the bombastic “Geyser” and of course the TikTok megahit “My Love Mine All Mine,” for which props lowered from the rafters to hover around Mitski, and seemingly every attendee took out their phone to capture the moment. A tidbit from my notes on the night of the show illustrates the feeling in the room well: “Everyone here knows every word, and they want to make sure everyone knows that they know every word.” But for my money, the most magical moment of the evening came during “Bug Like an Angel,” the opening track on The Land… and one of the most achingly beautiful songs any artist released in 2023. The tune’s hallmark is its choral backing vocals, which drop in and out at seemingly random moments. In a sold-out room surrounded by die-hard Mitski fans, the effect was embellished to massive, spine-tingling proportions.

And yet for as large a role as crowd participation played throughout the evening, I don’t think I’d ever been in a room that got so bracingly quiet between songs—the phrase “you could hear a pin drop” hardly does it justice. The rapt attention paid by the fans was a shocking disparity from the rapturous, screeching adulation that ensued when a song concluded or she moved her body a certain way.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of choreography to the show that Mitski has opted to bring to the stage in 2024. Though it was unclear to me which (if any) of her movements were improvised and which were planned, each seemed deliberate, some even motorik, many almost at odds with the music but still adding new dimensions to the performance. Across roughly two hours of performing, Mitski was almost never still, whether she was meticulously gesturing with her arms while singing, alternating between leaping around the stage and falling to the floor, treating a set of prop chairs like characters in the performance, or at one point literally imitating a dog. Even as a person with zero inclination for the thespian arts, I found this aspect of the show uniquely mesmerizing, never distracting from the music but instead elevating the show as a whole from a simple concert to something more resembling performance art.

Perhaps the greatest compliment that I can lavish on the show is this: As impressed as I was with Mitski throughout her two-hour performance, I couldn’t stop myself from making comparisons to some of her fabled contemporaries in the world of artfully elevated indie music. She incorporates the vintage inclinations of Father John Misty, the whimsy of Sufjan Stevens, the simulated disaffection of St. Vincent, all beloved artists that Mitski has already eclipsed in terms of reach and popularity. And yet the one that I couldn’t stop myself from coming back to time and time again was David Byrne, with whom she seems to share the unique instinct to elevate a simple pop music show into a wholly engrossing expression of her artistry—and, of course, an ability to integrate choreography in a way that heightens a musical experience completely.

By the time the show wrapped up with the mirror-ball-illuminated “Nobody” and electro-pop hit “Washing Machine Heart,” the room had reached a fever pitch of reverence for an artist who seems to be at the height of her powers. It’s still only January, but it’s hard to imagine that I, or any of the other attendees who witnessed this tour-opening show in Miami Beach, will see a better performance this year.

SET LIST
Everyone (Folk Version, Live debut)
Buffalo Replaced
Working for the Knife
The Frost
The Deal
Valentine, Texas (Live debut)
I Bet on Losing Dogs
Thursday Girl
Geyser
I Love Me After You
First Love / Late Spring
Star
Heaven
I Don’t Like My Mind
Happy
My Love Mine All Mine
Last Words of a Shooting Star
Pink in the Night (Folk Version, Live debut)
I’m Your Man
I Don’t Smoke (Folk version)
Bug Like an Angel
Love Me More (Folk version)
Fireworks (First time since 2019)