Mitski, “Townie”

Post Author: Bryn Lovitt

In this Don Giovanni meeting of the minds, visual artist Faye Orlove has combined forces with Mitski for the official “Townie” music video. Mitski’s pummeling, introspective guitar pop album Bury Me at Makeout Creek was released last year by Double Double Whammy but the songwriter’s recent signing to Don Giovanni calls for a spring-time reissue from the New Brunswick label. L.A.-based filmmaker Faye Orlove has animated the single with a flip-book of GIFS that pull directly from Mitski’s lyrics, repurposing them as text messages, blinking neon signs, and Twitter posts. Orlove’s book of similarly drawn pop-culture portraits titled Shrine was published by Don Giovanni this February. The video for “Townie” flips through tongue-n-cheek images that characterize the song as an ode to the adolescent frustrations that inspired the song. According to Mitski’s interview with The Fader: “It’s about being stuck, being impatient, being bored to death, being angry with what you’ve been given, and being young and soft and defiant inside and not knowing what to do with that.”