Mitski – Nothing‘s About to Happen to Me

Following her relatively minor work, 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, which came after the more synth-leaning Laurel Hell, Mitski goes for a creative reset on her eighth album. It’s a challenging step for the wildly popular singer-songwriter, who, in her own modest way, has experienced both viral success and a sustainable career trajectory. Depending on who you ask, of course, especially for those who swear that her mid-2010’s period, ending around her breakthrough, 2016’s Puberty 2, was her creative zenith.

It appears that Mitski was conscious of how far she’s come when assembling the initial pieces of Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. Such is the case for artists who stay rooted in an indie sensibility in the eyes of many, I suppose. The solution to carry on was much simpler than one might think. Expressing a genuine desire to return to her Puberty 2 days, Mitski partially succeeds. Partially, though, in the sense that she manages to evolve while capturing that album’s stripped-down immediacy.

The air of exhaustion heard on Laurel Hell dissipates on “In a Lake,” in which Mitski finds contentment, ready to face the trials of a big city despite thoughts of slowing down in a small town creeping in. Except that the track, much like the album, shows the many ways that intrusive thoughts take over. Perhaps Mitski views escapism as a refuge, but as tracks like “If I Leave” demonstrate, her feelings of unworthiness, deep in solitude, often morph into fantasy.

It begins to make sense why Mitski framed Nothing’s About To Happen To Me as an indirect confessional, told from the perspective of a reclusive woman, allowing her emotions to fully take flight. On the dour “Dead Woman,” which could be described as doom chamber-Americana, she imagines how others might perceive her after detailing the many ways her gruesome death might get romanticised. Whereas on the more precious “Charon’s Odol,” which goes on more of a cosmic country direction, a singing choir of howls and weeping pedal steel sets the haunting scene of a woman feeding the dogs of the girls who died inside the house she lives in. Attempting to live by the adage that by protecting others, one protects oneself, Mitski seems to grapple with the fear of being a public persona.

One might think that, going by the two tracks detailed above, Mitski settles firmly into country music. But despite the album’s relative uniformity, she expands her stylistic range in a very intuitive way. While “Rules” begins as one of the more country-oriented tracks here, the track swells with swinging horns and shuffling drums as she whimsically, and cynically, counts down the guide to having a perfectly transactional relationship. Feist’s surprise hit, “1234,” comes to mind. Performing with the same band she toured with on Inhospitable, she also delves into soaring rockers (“If I Leave”) and ’70s-recalling pop ballads (“Instead of Here”) that extend far beyond her early folk and punk leanings.

That Nothing’s About to Happen to Me feels both self-contained and expansive speaks to how Mitski moves to her own rhythm. When she expresses every desire to pare things down, the music ends up sounding more vital and complex. The more she pushes her art, the more her audience continues to grow. Such contradictions have become characteristic of her unique, and impossible to predict, career arc. While a testament to the passionate artistry she embodies, that it continues to elicit such a rapturous response from the masses is nothing short of a miracle.

Nothing’s About to Happen to Me is out via Dead Oceans.