Mitski’s previous work casts a looming shadow over the diminished Laurel Hell
While Laurel Hell takes the singer-songwriter in new directions, the music loses its potency
Music Reviews Mitski
Even at her most vulnerable, Mitski has always retained an enigmatic quality. Despite 2018's Be The Cowboy becoming the singer-songwriter’s most successful album yet, she announced in 2019 that she would be taking a hiatus for an unknown period of time: No more music, no more live shows, indefinitely. A clean break between her and all the pressures that come with writing popular music and a life constantly on the road. It’s a choice that guaranteed Mitski some mystique.
As it turns out, the hiatus dovetailed neatly with the pandemic: It took roughly two years to craft what would be her sixth studio album, Laurel Hell, heralded with last year’s single “Working For The Knife.” The time off, and its attendant creative freedom, has resulted in Mitski’s most liberating work. However, it’s also led to her safest album yet—one that feels easily outshined by her previous material.
Laurel Hell opens with the vast desert scenery of “Valentine, Texas,” where the mountains leading to Big Bend National Park loom gorgeously in the distance, but also where gawking tourists tend to congregate outside of the near-empty art installation titled Prada Marfa (which, yes, is actually in Valentine). This feeling of mixed identity makes itself clear in “Valentine, Texas”: A cautious tempo matches the opening lyrics, “Let’s step carefully,” as the record descends into the mind of the artist. The first, lulling verse builds into a swelling, glam-rock instrumental break, with glimmering synths and driving piano lines. The narrator wonders who she’ll be tonight; opening the door to a new self, she hopes the mountains in the distance will help lighten the mental weight she carries.
It’s a solid, even stoic opening song, but it’s hard to not be reminded of another album-opening track of Mitski’s, “Texas Reznikoff” (off of 2014’s Bury Me At Makeout Creek). It’s another emotive song with no chorus, which uses the southern state as a setting of release, with imagery of wide open blue skies and warm summer breezes. Tender and reflective, it soon bursts forth into a thrashing, hollering force—something “Valentine, Texas” almost begs for.
That opener is quickly overtaken by the next track, all about the heaviness and brutality of creating art under capitalism, and the unending desire to achieve what others view as “success.” “Working For The Knife” is intoxicating in sound and lyricism, as the beat falls hard and metal clanks in the background. She handles the complex theme with an apt hand, with lyrics like “I used to think I’d be done at 20, but now at 29 the road ahead appears the same.” At times the synths intentionally grate, adding to the industrial edge.
“Stay Soft” meanders over into ’70s pop territory, reminiscent of groups like ABBA. It’s lively and funky—but despite lyrics about the harshness of the world and how it creates callouses on the softest parts of ourselves, “Stay Soft” feels wrapped in a musical safety blanket. While the monumental Be The Cowboy took elements of pop and rock, twisting and dialing them up to 10, the familiar nature of “Stay Soft” exemplifies the issue with Laurel Hell and its dearth of risk-taking.
Despite coming back after a self-imposed hiatus, it still feels like there’s a thick pane of glass between Mitski and the listener. On previous albums like Puberty 2 and Bury Me At Makeout Creek, you can feel Mitski inviting you into her mind. Much of Laurel Hell comes across like she’s scared to offer up as much emotionally as she did before—wanting to withhold as much as of herself as she can while making her art. It’s a fine intention in theory, but it leaves something to be desired when it feels like an artist is holding back.
“Everyone,” again without a chorus and droning pace, sticks around a little too long. And it finds another companion track from her last record: The line between Be The Cowboy’s “Nobody” and “Everyone” pulls and tugs at the listener, but while “Nobody” unleashes catharsis about feelings of loneliness, “Everyone” fails to grasp at anything. It stays in one place, as if trepidatious about taking things up a notch, either vocally or instrumentally.
“Heat Lightning” takes us out west once more, as thundering drums roll in and Mitski taps into a sense of surrender. It’s the first moment of real release on the album, led by a cascading piano. As she sings, “There’s not much I can do, not much I can change,” things begin to expand, her voice rising as a stinging, lifted synth comes in, sending little zaps of electricity through the song. That frisson of intensity highlights both the possibility and volatility in this new sound, pushing the musician to an elevated place.
It’s followed by a duo of ’80s pop and new wave-inspired offerings. “The Only Heartbreaker” finds Mitski taking on the role of villain—the mess, the ruiner, who not only accepts this analysis, but owns it. “Love Me More,” in contrast, describes a bespoke passion that could fill her up, drowning out all the little voices in her head and leaving only love. While the former can spur dancing, the latter feels like running down a never-ending hallway, reaching for something always a few feet away. Yet, like “Stay Soft,” these two feel safe, with even the grittier moments of “The Only Heartbreaker” lacking a real bite, the kind of straight-to-the-throat feeling so easily found in older songs like “Townie,” “The Pearl,” and “I Bet On Losing Dogs.”
The elements of rock are first heard in “There’s Nothing Left For You,” as cymbals begin to crash and she belts over rumbling drums. It’s an arrangement Mitski has always been fond of: a quiet entry leading to the big build-up. But as it reaches toward something greater, all the tension quickly subsides. Unlike the unleashed hell of Bury Me At Makeout Creek, which followed this structure over and over but never backed down, this track merely peters out. For someone who has historically bared it all in her work, it’s frustrating to hear Mitski craft songs with such surface-level musicality.
Still, on a lyrical level, she conjures wonderful tales of sorrow and desire, with a pointed sense of brevity and a newfound ability to just let things go. After holding onto so much in Be The Cowboy, it seems she’s accepted what she couldn’t change, and now refuses to look back.
Laurel Hell is a definite maturation for Mitski, whose body of work has historically been all about holding fast to pain. This new record argues there can be beauty in letting go and finding the lighter side of life; but only if it doesn’t ring emotionally hollow. The qualities that make Mitski great—her urgency, rawness, and stark ferocity—feel muted here, on an album that seems to cower in fear of making something too bombastically powerful again. True, even when tempered, her roiling under-the-surface drama feels palpable at times. But the hesitancy to let listeners get too close ends up keeping them at arms length.
16 Comments
The singles so far have been fuckin awesome and by far my favourite Mitski music so far, so I’m really excited for this. It’s funny how this review and others basically spend their whole time trying to write around the fact they clearly wanna call Mitski a sellout for making a ‘poppier’ album – who cares when it sounds as good as The Only Heartbreaker?
I can’t say I know much about this artist but it struck me as a little odd to call an album an artists’ ‘most liberating’ and one sentence later their ‘safest’. Those concepts seem naturally at odds. One doesn’t need to necessarily justify not loving the style of the songs via cliched critical vocabulary.
The singles so far have been fuckin awesome and by far my favourite Mitski music so far Yes, agreed. Is it the case that the rest of the album is disappointing, or is the writer saying he didn’t like the singles either? To Japan’s point, it’s certainly strange to say she sounds “liberated” yet also this is her safest album? I don’t know. I just like the songs!
I’m leery of this review…what more do you want out of The Only Heartbreaker? The home address of the person whose heart she broke? How is Working for the Knife holding back? Did she need to name the album “Drudgery”? I will draw my own conclusions, but she has released half the album already and it’s better than this review already. Sounds a bit like a thesis looking for support.
Is there a song that captures the current moment better than “working for the knife”? That one really blew me away. Especially “I always thought the choice was mine, and I was right, but I just chose wrong.” That’s totally something Sondheim would have written.
The odd thing is that Mitski herself is fairly clear in interviews that none of her work should be read as some sort of direct personal confession.
Yeah but everybody says that. Philip Roth probably said that at one point. Working For The Knife can’t be completely confessional about Mitski’s present state given that Mitski is, you know, artistically successful, and was at 29. But that ambiguity makes the song even more intriguing: is this a compassionate look back at herself before she was successful? is this a compassionate look at people who want more out of life? is this an extraordinarily harsh punching-down take on somebody who isn’t any good at art or who sold out? I’m inclined not to believe this is an indictment or a spiteful rejoinder…partly because “stories about no-good guys” sure seems like a wry self-digHaving heard the album all the way through at least once (I’ve been busy) I can say that it is definitely better than this review, however, it’s not perfect (gasp), some of the songs are too quiet and noodly, maybe they’re growers maybe not.
Everybody does say that that, and not only is there no particular reason to disbelieve them, but if they’re any good then they’re right. I don’t trust an artist in any medium who claims that what they are making is a direct, unfiltered product of their lived experience, like some sort of swooning 19th century poetaster. They are either lying or being astonishingly ill-disciplined about their craft, and I don’t get the sense that she is doing either. Sure, she’s building from her own experience, what else have you got, but there’s no reason to think she’s doing so in any direct manner that might inform us about how she, personally, feels about anything.
I was just reading a few interviews with her that I hadn’t seen and in one she says something interesting, that the “you” in some of her songs is music, like music is the difficult sometimes heartbreaking sometimes abusive other in the relationship songs…well why don’t I just quote: “I’m revealing a big secret,” she says, “but a lot of my songs are just about music and trying to pursue it, and not feeling loved by it. A lot of the ‘yous’ in my songs are abstract ideas about music.”I don’t believe confessional art is inherently better or worse, many people think it is automatically worse which to me argues that it is worth dissembling about a little to avoid that prejudice (I always love when a memoir like Sarah Polley’s one that’s getting published soon has “essays” instead of stories…99% of the stories we tell are relating things that happened to us during the day, but I write down “I went to the doctor and he said X” and that magically becomes an essay?). I also think that it is an eternal stereotype and the subject of many films when somebody claims their stuff is all made up and it’s clearly thinly-disguised people (and reveals affairs, lies, etc., but it was fiction I swear!).I bet that poe tastes delicious
I like the album a lot but I think there’s something weird about the mixing? I keep having to turn my stereo, or car stereo, or headphones up and down to hear what’s being said and then my ears get blown by the next thing. It’s almost impossible to listen to in a car. Then on “Everyone” the vocals are extremely muffled, and for a song that is musically repetitive and so relies on the vocals I guess I will look up the lyrics. I listened to a song from Be The Cowboy and you could always hear everything and make out what she’s saying…I generally don’t mind obscured vocals that much, the weird murky deep audio that sounds like a mistake is messing up some really good songs.
I liked what I’ve heard of it so far. I’m reminded a little of “Blonde”, where the best moments are the quiet moments. Reviews for that tended to be mixed as well, initially, but it caught on over time. Man, I miss Frank. I think Mitski might be heading in that direction too.
I haven’t heard the album yet so I’ll reserve judgement, but based on the singles this album leans more Puberty 2 than Be the Cowboy, which to me is a good thing. I like this version of Mitski.
Ah, so this is the Mitski album that everyone low balls, while every other mediocre to decent to pretty solid women singer/songwriter album gets bumped up at least a full letter grade for no reason other than (you know why).
I understand the perspective of this review but I’d also argue Mitksi’s “thick pane of glass” between her and the listener is intentional and meaningful if you look at it that way. In Working for the Knife, though it is about the hopelessness that comes with working under capitalism, another aspect of it is about Mitski having to use her heartbreak and personal life in order to sell. I think that the distance she’s created between the listener and herself in Laurel Hell is a part of this album being liberating and safe at the same time.
To be honest, I think this is slightly better than ‘Be the Cowboy’. I feel like this is one of the many reviews that are unduly disappointed at the absence of some seismic change in musical approach to go with the (actually fairly short by historical standards) hiatus in releases.
I’ve finally listened to the album enough times through now to say that while I enjoy all the parts of it, it just feels disconnected and overproduced. The vocals and the music don’t feel like they belong on the same album. I miss the version of Mitski that played guitar. The fist song of hers I ever heard was Your Best American Girl and was greatly impressed with her skill so that biases me towards that version of her a little I guess.