Disappointment. This is the word that comes to mind when I think of the newest Mitski record. Not because the album underdelivers, mind you, but because it is consumed by the ennui of broken promises.
Laurel Hell, Mitski’s highly anticipated sixth studio album, is derived from an Appalachian folk term. To paraphrase the songwriter in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, laurel bushes around the Southern Appalachian mountains grow in dense, wide thickets where one can become trapped. “Laurel Hells” are thickets named after victims that died trapped in the bushes.
The titles of Mitski’s records usually exist as the key to unlocking the connectivity of the songs’ themes. Puberty 2 is about the hardships that transition one from adolescence to adulthood. Songs about menial labour, cultural identity, and relationships create an overarching narrative of the “second puberty” one experiences in their early-to-mid twenties. Be the Cowboy takes the famous American iconography of the lonesome wanderer and uses it as a mascot for an album that goes on to spend 30 tight minutes deconstructing loneliness—the phrase “be the cowboy” becoming synonymous with “embrace the loneliness.”
This brings us back to Laurel Hell, an album which finds its throughline in the idea of being stuck. Laurel Hell is about being disillusioned by life and learning to move past it. In many ways it serves as a spiritual successor to Puberty 2; it takes a hard look at the trials and tribulations of growing up and asks “what the hell was the point?” The consensus that Mitski seems to arrive at is that, while there is no point, beauty can be found within clarity.
One of the biggest criticisms that could be tossed at Laurel Hell is the consistency of its sonic palette. A big draw for a Mitski record is how she vacillates between different styles. Depending on where you are in the tracklist you might find yourself listening to a punk cut, a country western ballad, or, in the case of her most famous track “Nobody,” going full Frank Sinatra. Laurel Hell isn’t without its sonic deviations. “Working for the Knife” is clearly seeped in the style of 80s industrial music while the flamboyant “Should’ve Been Me” takes a baroque pop track and gives it a Hall and Oates-inspired groove. But for the most part Laurel Hell is an electropop record. It never deviates too far from its established formula.
After a few spins it becomes clear that not only is Laurel Hell’s sonic consistency a non-issue but a clear necessity to its subject matter. Laurel Hell is an album immersed in monotony. It should be using fewer colours than Mitski’s previous records. It’s show of restraint contributes to its themes of loss inspirations and learning from that loss to restore ourselves.
“Working for the Knife” and its brooding industrial production signify the weight crushing down on Mitski’s shoulders. The track’s droning synth evokes images of factorylines and other professions that turn men and women into machines. Capitalism, aging, and societal expectations are crushing down on Mitski as she enters her 30’s—a lyrical theme matched by aggressive guitar lines and horns that enter the mix as abruptly as these factors start to pervade the songwriter’s life.
What’s hilarious about “Working for the Knife,” the album’s second track, is that it comes right after the dreamy opener “Valentine, Texas.” “Valentine, Texas” isn’t exactly joyous, but there’s a real feeling of hope beneath the melancholy—especially when the synths kick in at the end of the first verse. Optimism consumes her as she croons about finally getting the proverbial mountains off her back only for them to flatten her like Daffy Duck in the next song. Franky, the sequencing is comical. It’s this one-two punch-up, this emotional tug-of-war between its opening tracks that perfectly illustrates Laurel Hell’s dichotomy of hope and despair.
The album is constantly juxtaposing ideas by sequencing them right next to each other on the tracklist. The most prominent example of this is Laurel Hell’s two central love songs, “The Only Heartbreaker” and “Love Me More” respectively. “The Only Heartbreaker” is textbook Mitski songwriting—trauma and heartbreak expressed through anthemic catharsis. Mitski finds herself in either a promising relationship or a toxic one, the song leaves it ambiguious, and she is ready for it to fall apart. She’s played this game too many times. In order to save herself pain, she resigns herself to a self-fulfilling prophecy: if it ends, it’s her fault.
“Love Me More” puts that idea in perspective and has Mitski wrestling with the fact that maybe the onus isn’t always on her. Not just in relationships but with life in general, Mitski concludes that she’s going to have to start advocating for her self-worth if she doesn’t want to languish away inside—the operative word “inside” meaning many things depending on the context. Mitski said she wrote the song before the pandemic but kept lyrics pertaining to being trapped inside in knowing full well how they’d be interpreted. It’s not to say that Laurel Hell is strictly pandemic-core, but, as society enters the third year of the so-called “new normal,” an album about breaking free of the monotony is as much a salve as Fiona Apple fetching the fucking bolt cutters. But like Fiona Apple’s recent masterpiece, it doesn’t take a pandemic to contextualise the work.
As synthetic as the sonics of Laurel Hell may be, the sense of longing and loss the lyrics evoke are quite real. That’s not just a neat little contrast, it’s the heart of the record. The lyrics aren’t complementing the sound, they’re at war with it. It’s millennial angst warring with the machine for autonomy—a semblance of control in a world where everything has already been played out.
Much of Mitski's best work comes from deconstructing conflict. “Your Best American Girl,” one of the ten best songs of the last quarter century, mourns a relationship that falls apart because of contrasting cultural upbringings. Mitski attempts to assimilate to her partner’s cultural expectations, fails, and realises she never should have been trying in the first place. Laurel Hell’s conflict of sonics and lyricism symbolises the record’s attitude: a refusal to conform for a culture that wants to crush you.
One of my favourite parts of listening to a new Mitski record is how she approaches sexuality, constantly using sexual motifs to convey different elements of human psychology. This time, and I’m sorry to break the fourth wall, dear reader, but I’m laughing typing this out, her focus is the male erection. In the chorus of “Stay Soft,” she sings that those who stay soft will get eaten and that it is only natural to harden up. It is a magnificent triple entendre.
On its surface level, it is exactly what it sounds like and it’s catchy as hell. Dig deeper… and it’s about toxic masculinity. To stay soft is to leave you exposed causing an inability to be vulnerable in relationships. It’s a vicious cycle, only natural in a patriarchal society. But at its core, Mitski is presenting the listener with a choice: you can either stay true to yourself and make yourself vulnerable to danger or you can conform and slowly die inside. It’s not an easy choice and most of us settle somewhere in between, but it’s the pondering of that dilemma that breathes life into the cold, cold world of Laurel Hell.
Disappointment. This is the word that comes to mind when I think of the newest Mitski record. Not because the album underdelivers, mind you, but because it is consumed by the ennui of broken promises.
Laurel Hell, Mitski’s highly anticipated sixth studio album, is derived from an Appalachian folk term. To paraphrase the songwriter in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, laurel bushes around the Southern Appalachian mountains grow in dense, wide thickets where one can become trapped. “Laurel Hells” are thickets named after victims that died trapped in the bushes.
The titles of Mitski’s records usually exist as the key to unlocking the connectivity of the songs’ themes. Puberty 2 is about the hardships that transition one from adolescence to adulthood. Songs about menial labour, cultural identity, and relationships create an overarching narrative of the “second puberty” one experiences in their early-to-mid twenties. Be the Cowboy takes the famous American iconography of the lonesome wanderer and uses it as a mascot for an album that goes on to spend 30 tight minutes deconstructing loneliness—the phrase “be the cowboy” becoming synonymous with “embrace the loneliness.”
This brings us back to Laurel Hell, an album which finds its throughline in the idea of being stuck. Laurel Hell is about being disillusioned by life and learning to move past it. In many ways it serves as a spiritual successor to Puberty 2; it takes a hard look at the trials and tribulations of growing up and asks “what the hell was the point?” The consensus that Mitski seems to arrive at is that, while there is no point, beauty can be found within clarity.
One of the biggest criticisms that could be tossed at Laurel Hell is the consistency of its sonic palette. A big draw for a Mitski record is how she vacillates between different styles. Depending on where you are in the tracklist you might find yourself listening to a punk cut, a country western ballad, or, in the case of her most famous track “Nobody,” going full Frank Sinatra. Laurel Hell isn’t without its sonic deviations. “Working for the Knife” is clearly seeped in the style of 80s industrial music while the flamboyant “Should’ve Been Me” takes a baroque pop track and gives it a Hall and Oates-inspired groove. But for the most part Laurel Hell is an electropop record. It never deviates too far from its established formula.
After a few spins it becomes clear that not only is Laurel Hell’s sonic consistency a non-issue but a clear necessity to its subject matter. Laurel Hell is an album immersed in monotony. It should be using fewer colours than Mitski’s previous records. It’s show of restraint contributes to its themes of loss inspirations and learning from that loss to restore ourselves.
“Working for the Knife” and its brooding industrial production signify the weight crushing down on Mitski’s shoulders. The track’s droning synth evokes images of factorylines and other professions that turn men and women into machines. Capitalism, aging, and societal expectations are crushing down on Mitski as she enters her 30’s—a lyrical theme matched by aggressive guitar lines and horns that enter the mix as abruptly as these factors start to pervade the songwriter’s life.
What’s hilarious about “Working for the Knife,” the album’s second track, is that it comes right after the dreamy opener “Valentine, Texas.” “Valentine, Texas” isn’t exactly joyous, but there’s a real feeling of hope beneath the melancholy—especially when the synths kick in at the end of the first verse. Optimism consumes her as she croons about finally getting the proverbial mountains off her back only for them to flatten her like Daffy Duck in the next song. Franky, the sequencing is comical. It’s this one-two punch-up, this emotional tug-of-war between its opening tracks that perfectly illustrates Laurel Hell’s dichotomy of hope and despair.
The album is constantly juxtaposing ideas by sequencing them right next to each other on the tracklist. The most prominent example of this is Laurel Hell’s two central love songs, “The Only Heartbreaker” and “Love Me More” respectively. “The Only Heartbreaker” is textbook Mitski songwriting—trauma and heartbreak expressed through anthemic catharsis. Mitski finds herself in either a promising relationship or a toxic one, the song leaves it ambiguious, and she is ready for it to fall apart. She’s played this game too many times. In order to save herself pain, she resigns herself to a self-fulfilling prophecy: if it ends, it’s her fault.
“Love Me More” puts that idea in perspective and has Mitski wrestling with the fact that maybe the onus isn’t always on her. Not just in relationships but with life in general, Mitski concludes that she’s going to have to start advocating for her self-worth if she doesn’t want to languish away inside—the operative word “inside” meaning many things depending on the context. Mitski said she wrote the song before the pandemic but kept lyrics pertaining to being trapped inside in knowing full well how they’d be interpreted. It’s not to say that Laurel Hell is strictly pandemic-core, but, as society enters the third year of the so-called “new normal,” an album about breaking free of the monotony is as much a salve as Fiona Apple fetching the fucking bolt cutters. But like Fiona Apple’s recent masterpiece, it doesn’t take a pandemic to contextualise the work.
As synthetic as the sonics of Laurel Hell may be, the sense of longing and loss the lyrics evoke are quite real. That’s not just a neat little contrast, it’s the heart of the record. The lyrics aren’t complementing the sound, they’re at war with it. It’s millennial angst warring with the machine for autonomy—a semblance of control in a world where everything has already been played out.
Much of Mitski's best work comes from deconstructing conflict. “Your Best American Girl,” one of the ten best songs of the last quarter century, mourns a relationship that falls apart because of contrasting cultural upbringings. Mitski attempts to assimilate to her partner’s cultural expectations, fails, and realises she never should have been trying in the first place. Laurel Hell’s conflict of sonics and lyricism symbolises the record’s attitude: a refusal to conform for a culture that wants to crush you.
One of my favourite parts of listening to a new Mitski record is how she approaches sexuality, constantly using sexual motifs to convey different elements of human psychology. This time, and I’m sorry to break the fourth wall, dear reader, but I’m laughing typing this out, her focus is the male erection. In the chorus of “Stay Soft,” she sings that those who stay soft will get eaten and that it is only natural to harden up. It is a magnificent triple entendre.
On its surface level, it is exactly what it sounds like and it’s catchy as hell. Dig deeper… and it’s about toxic masculinity. To stay soft is to leave you exposed causing an inability to be vulnerable in relationships. It’s a vicious cycle, only natural in a patriarchal society. But at its core, Mitski is presenting the listener with a choice: you can either stay true to yourself and make yourself vulnerable to danger or you can conform and slowly die inside. It’s not an easy choice and most of us settle somewhere in between, but it’s the pondering of that dilemma that breathes life into the cold, cold world of Laurel Hell.
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