Mitski – Nothing's About to Happen to Me
On her eighth album, Mitski weaves together anxious, wiry guitar and melancholic strings into sublime orchestral pop bruised by loneliness
‘I won’t leave you, cause I still love you / So it’s up to you if you choose to go’ sings Mitski on Cats, one of the most beautiful tracks from Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. Gritty guitar claws out the rhythm and pedal steel slinks across the backdrop as the narrator finds solace in the two cats by her side. This aching vulnerability is seared across the album, building upon the elegant orchestration of her previous LP to create a rich, sultry infusion of vintage pop and noisy indie-rock, easily matching her best songwriting to date.
The feline imagery returns on That White Cat, which bristles with spite as the narrator complains of a neighbourhood cat encroaching on her garden. This sense of intrusion is made visceral on Where’s My Phone?, as lumbering guitars and distortion crowd in on Mitski’s nimble vocal melody. Rules is a country rocker with a boisterous big band interlude. But especially beautiful is the yearning, liquid jazz of I’ll Change for You. Across the LP Mitski’s velvet vocals command the melodies, interlacing mystical beauty and prickly anxiety: the cat purring softly on your lap and the stray skulking through the yard.
Listen to: Where's My Phone?, Cats, I'll Change for You