After three years, Mitski is back with eleven new songs that fill the room with warmth and melancholy. Her new record Nothing’s About to Happen to Me radiates more lightness than its predecessor The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (2023). It has more in common with Be the Cowboy (2018) and her debut album Lush – poppier again, fuller, dreamier and more summery.
With her customary assurance, the singer-songwriter of Japanese-American background combines musical lightness with lyrics in which listeners can recognise themselves. »If you don’t like me now, I’ll change for you«, she sings softly, accompanied with quiet restraint by bass and piano. Feelings of loneliness are bound to a warm sound and a recognisable, emotionally charged voice.
Were it not for the themes the globally successful singer turns to, one might well describe the warm sound – shaped by strings, brass, piano and percussion – as timeless. Yet her lyrics do not merely capture the sense of being lost as a young adult; they also register the banalities of modern everyday life.
On »Where’s my Phone?«, she sings about the disappearance of her mobile phone over drums and electric guitar. Later, she loops her voice, the guitar grows scratchier and the mood darker. Across these new songs, Mitski moves skilfully between rock and pop, creating work that sounds new while remaining unmistakably her own.
