Mitski rocks Hollywood High School to kick off a 5-night residency

Ten songs into the night, singer-songwriter Mitski paused to address the audience on Monday, the first of her five sold-out shows at Hollywood High School this week.

“Thank you so much for being here,” she began. “Can I tell you something, though? Um, when I first got here, I slightly regretted having this at a high school, because I was immediately triggered.

“So triggered! I don’t know about y’all, but … oh my God,” Mitski continued. “As soon as I set foot on campus, my brain immediately, like, scanned and clocked all of my exits and places I can hide.”

You believe her, of course. That shy, awkward teenager has always been there in the songs that Mitski Miyawaka has on eight albums and 14 years. Sure, she’s 35 now, more confident, more comfortable in her own skin.

But as she and her band performed 25 songs over 90 minutes on Monday, the emotional core of a young woman’s journey was ever-present in lyrics and music that swung from melancholy ballads to darkly comedic rants, angry blasts of rock and roll, and every point in between.

“In a Lake” opened the show as it does her latest album, “Nothing Is About to Happen to Me,” which arrived on Feb. 27. A gentle ballad, Mitski sang about too many rules, too much familiarity for comfort.

“But in a lake, you can backstroke forever,” she sang in the chorus as her terrific five-piece band played softly behind her. “The sky before you, the dark right behind. And in a big city, you can start over.”

“Cats” followed – the new album is a delightfully feline-focused collection both in lyrics and album art – portraying a couple on the rocks, the protagonist accepting that her partner may go while hoping for the opposite. [“That White Cat,” meanwhile, closed out the main set on Monday.]

“I won’t leave you ’cause I still love you,” she sang. “So it’s up to you if you choose to go. In the meantime, sleeping by my side, our two cats, making sure I’ll be all right.”

Many of these songs reflect the imagined world in which they take place, a mostly vintage, slightly Victorian, messy, mysterious place Mitski named the Tansy House, which for these shows was made real in a walk-through exhibition in the basement of the high school theater.

On stage, the set design incorporates elements of that same place where a woman exploring her life might hide away from the world and lovers of different qualities with her cats and her books and her photographs.

At one side of the stage, a vintage sofa with a dimly glowing floor lamp offered to sit or literally throw oneself, as Mitski did at the end of the frenetic rock and frustrated cries of “Where’s My Phone?” At the other end, a writing desk with a small cloth-shaded lamp offered a spot to perch during “Cats.” Both added elements of theatricality to the production.

“Dead Women” delivered another early highlight amid the woozy clamor of the arrangement, footage of ocean waters rising and falling on the screens behind Mitski as she imagined how her lover might prefer her gone so to shape her memories to their own satisfaction.

“Would you have liked me better if I’d died?” she sang. “So you could tell my story the way it ought to be? You’d find my parents and ask to see my things. Rifle through it all, fill the blanks with what you need.”

For many songs, old film clips added context to the music and words performed before the backdrop. The ballad “Heaven” accentuates its lyrical sense of the fleeting nature of joy with footage of an Old Hollywood couple dancing elegantly with swirls and dips. “Rules” underscored the arbitrary nature of expected behavior with a 1950s film to teach children good manners.

“I’ll Change For,” one of the loveliest, emotional ballads of the night, used clips from the 1950 noir “Woman on the Run” beneath its lyrical tale of loneliness and isolation, and the desperate places of the heart.

Many of these songs are sad songs – you probably got that, didn’t you? – but musically each struck its own tones: Loud, powerful rock and roll on “Dan the Dancer” and “Lightning,” softer syncopated feels on the boom-chick-chick rhythms of “Washing Machine Heart,” the pounding tom-tom beats and swirls of keyboard at the climax of the ballad “I Want You.”

[In contrast, singer-songwriter Haley Heynderickx, who opened for Mitski, delivered a beautiful set of more traditional folk-style songs, accompanying herself entirely on acoustic guitar.]

Highlights as the show neared its finish included the fan favorites “Francis Forever” and the gorgeously sung “My Love Mine All Mine.”

Earlier, Mitski had thanked Hollywood High School Principal Samuel Dovlatian, noting that he’d decided to donate the theater’s rental fees for these shows to pay for caps and gowns for this year’s graduating seniors. A final high school reference popped up unexpectedly in the lyrics of a song near the end of the show.

“Does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?” Mitski sang in the opening line of “Two Slow Dancers,” prompting shouts and laughter from the crowd. “It’s funny how they’re all the same.”

Not so much school theaters, you realize as you walk out of Hollywood High School’s, past posters for student productions of “Rent,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

It’s not every high school theater that gets a chance to stage this, a show of heart and healing for the shy, awkward teens that most of us still harbor within.