“Two Slow Dancers”

If you’ve ever been in the throes of young love, you may have experienced the embarrassing thrill of a first slow dance at a middle school formal. Mitski knows this feeling well. On “Two Slow Dancers,” the closing track of her forthcoming album Be the Cowboy, she conjures up the all-too familiar stench of a dingy gymnasium, remarking, “It’s funny how they’re all the same.” She also knows that despite its potentially unglamorous setting, the first slow dance is a special coming-of-age moment in many adolescent lives. During those four minutes of shuffling back and forth in an awkward embrace, you both feel like you’re the only two people who exist in the world.

On the hauntingly beautiful ballad “Two Slow Dancers,” Mitski yearns for the simplicity of that childhood approach to romance. “It would be a hundred times easier/If we were young again,” she sings regretfully, her delicate voice floating over mellow, pulsating synth chords. But since Mitski’s love songs are never just about love, the second verse takes a dark turn into the mind of someone who is older. As she sings about gravity wanting to push her and her partner back down to earth, strings swell into the foreground, and what was just a simple, tender waltz grows into a tense confrontation with impending death. So when Mitski conjures up the image of being the “last ones,” it’s unclear if she’s talking about exiting the dance floor or exiting this physical plane. For Mitski, maybe both would be fine, as long as her arms are locked around the one that she loves.