Mitski's New Album Is a Dark Ode to Isolation

"On "Where's My Phone?," the second track on Mitski's eighth studio album, "Nothing's About to Happen to Me," she sings, "I just want my mind to be a clear glass / Clear glass with nothing in my head." The lyric serves as a thesis statement of sorts for a concept album that is as much an immersive literary experience as an exercise in listening."

"Before she wishes to have a clear mind, for example, the narrator is berated by a woman on the street, who calls her a "ditch on my block." On "In a Lake," the speaker insists that she'd never live in a small town, because "everywhere you go makes your heart ache." We come to understand that the outside world does not favor the speaker, who is perceived to have a type of strangeness about her."

"This woman, when sequestered in her house, feels more at peace than she could ever feel in the world beyond her door. Mitski, now thirty-five, has always written songs of exceptional rawness and vulnerability, placing herself in closeup against a thin layer of glass."

Mitski's concept album "Nothing's About to Happen to Me" presents a reclusive woman navigating the inhospitality of the outside world. The album explores the contrast between how the speaker is perceived externally—as strange and unwelcome—and her internal emotional landscape. Through songs like "Where's My Phone?" and "In a Lake," the narrator expresses a desire for mental clarity and reveals that external environments cause emotional pain. The album functions as both a musical and literary work, examining who observes the speaker and what that observation reveals. Within her secluded house, the woman experiences greater peace than she could achieve in the world beyond her door, despite underlying dread.

Read at The New Yorker