Lush

Lush is the debut studio album by American musician Mitski. Mitski self-released the album on January 31, 2012 as her junior year project at SUNY Purchase. It was mixed by Scot Moriarty. Background Mitski described the album as by "someone who simply wrote her feelings and didn't think about how her narrative was being conveyed", describing a version of herself that is "long gone now". Patrick Hyland, producer of all of Mitski's subsequent albums, described the album with the quote: "Lush was in college, like, 'Oh, my gosh, there are studios! There are other instrumentalists!" The album is primarily chamber pop, with elements of lo-fi and punk rock. Lush has been described as "mournful" by Rolling Stone. It is "her most piano-laden work," characterized by Nylon as "a series of vivid, smooth, and unraveling narratives." Critical reception In a career retrospective following her 2018 studio album Be the Cowboy, Jesse Herb of Atwood Magazine said that the album "plays out like a beautiful stream of consciousness" and praised Mitski's poetic lyricism.