Retired from sad, Mitski is back with her newest album to tell an emotional tale.
With her gain in popularity following the release of “My Love All Mine” Mitski, along with producer Patrick Hyland, releases her eighth studio album, “Nothing Bad is Going to Happen to Me.”
Originally meant to be released as a stripped-down rock album drawing on her punk roots, the album continues her tradition of deeply emotional and introspective songwriting while also giving us a darker, more narrative-driven story.
Continuing with her influence of Americana, folk and punk, she brings in many elements of her last album, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” with her use of accordion and banjo following her into the new album to convey a whimsical yet haunting atmosphere.
The album allows space for both quiet moments for the audience to breathe, with a layering of soft vocals with banjo and accordion, before taking us into a crescendo of distorted guitar and layered vocals. This back and forth between quiet-and-calm vs. loud-and-chaotic reflects our narrator’s mental state and internal conflicts. Her moments of clarity are constantly interrupted by the waves of anxiety and emotional intensity.
Within the album, Mitski reflects on themes of isolation, unrequited love and a mental unraveling through the lens of a woman who has withdrawn herself from the outside world. Reflecting these elements through her almost haunting orchestral melodies and anxiety-reflecting guitar riffs.
Mitski, through this album, tells the story of our narrator. A woman who has secluded herself from the outside world, finding freedom inside her own walls.
On the first track of the album “In a Lake,” our narrator struggles to conform to the idea of living in a small town. Being “slow to learn the rules,” she is likely to gain a reputation for being troubled. Despite her efforts to do right, she finds herself repeatedly stepping out of line only to further ruin her reputation. Within the song, she mentions that “in a lake, you can backstroke forever. The sky before you and the dark behind you,” emphasizing her longing for a new beginning and to leave her dark past behind in the depths of the lake.
The tension between her own personal freedom and societal acceptance lingers through the entire album, especially emphasizing her unrequited love that drives the narrator’s mental spiral.
The third track, “Cats,” draws on her inability to accept herself once again, trying to conform to how she thinks her lover wants her to be. We can draw from her other songs on the album, “I’ll Change for You and If I Leave” that she is vividly trapped between a version of herself that she wants to be accepted and one where she is free from the anxieties of acceptance.
Through the album, she is forced to look at the walls that she has built up around her to keep her own peace, but has to confront that although she gains comfort from this, it is these very walls that keep her isolated from the connection she yearns for.
Keep an eye out for future releases as Mitski is working on the score for the on-stage production of “The Queen’s Gambit”.
