Mitski Illuminates the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago

Words & Photos by Anthony Scanga (ras_visual)

Mitski brought a career spanning set to the auditorium theater in Chicago this past weekend.

The concert was an amazing mix of performance art and storytelling through her music. Mitski brought a career spanning set to the auditorium theater in Chicago this past weekend.
The concert was an amazing mix of performance art and storytelling through her music. Accompanied by an adept septet anchored by her longtime producer, Patrick Hyland, Mitski’s show featured a diverse sonic palette ranging from honky-tonk to chamber pop.

One of the more grabbing aspects of the show was the use of lighting and how Mitski interacted with it, shadows played a large part in the opening song in which a “shadow dance” was done throughout and not revealing Mitski till the end of the song, then multiply other times during the show dancing with beams of light and synchronized strobing along with beams creating a mock prison for Mitski crafting one of the more creative uses of lighting this reviewer had seen in a while.

Fans were truly excited singing along very enthusiastically and then showing a massive amount of respect for the artist while in between songs you could hear a pin drop as they were hanging on to everything happening on the stage.

The show was truly both haunting and beautiful and after it was over it felt like something truly captivating had been witnessed. Julia Jacklin opened the show with her blend of folk singer songwriter and was a good warm up to the transportive performance that Mitski put on.