Promotional material for "Nothing's About to Happen to Me." By Skye Anderson, Lifestyles editor
Mitski has spoken throughout the years about her uneasy relationship to music and her career: after her top-ten-charting 2022 album “Laurel Hell,” she thought she was going to quit before changing her mind and returning with acclaimed folk record “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” the following year.
On her eighth studio album, Mitski embraces the uncertainty, wandering a place she can’t be sure still serves her yet she can’t escape. Taking the forms of animals, ghosts, rainstorms and angry old women on the street, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” combs through a life’s worth of cobwebs in dead liminal spaces.
“I’d never live in a small town / I’ve made too many mistakes,” Mitski sings in the album’s opening lines. This idea of inevitable pain and death echoes throughout the remaining 34 minutes as perhaps the only constant the speaker can see, pondering when—not if—it will come.
The first single and second track “Where’s My Phone?” sees the only moment of panic on a record otherwise restrained and accepting of this impending absence. “I keep thinking surely somebody will save me / at every turn I learn that no one will” calls back to her breakout hit “Nobody” in which she sang “and I know no one will save me / I just need someone to kiss.” This urgent need for saving, though, comes from a different place: while “Nobody” sees a youthful, angsty desire for intimacy, “Where’s My Phone?” feels like a last plea for peace at the end of a disillusioned life.
Sonically, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” picks up where “The Land Is Inhospitable” left off, with slow, lush folk tracks that glimmeringly unfold. The guitar in “Where’s My Phone?” and “Rules” delightfully takes after that of 2016’s “Puberty 2.”
“That White Cat” is one of Mitski’s best songs yet. As the speaker surrenders her house to a white cat in a very what-the-hell-sure-I’ve-been-through-enough-at-this-point way, reverent Gregorian chant-esque vocals and intense production reminiscent of 2014 song “Drunk Walk Home” make the track a standout.
“I’ll Change for You” is the most vulnerable, concrete track, asking a lover to give her another chance—a stark contrast from the secluded character we’ve seen. It has one of the album’s most intriguing lyrics, which gives the song’s the subject matter ambiguity akin to the themes of death and absence: “You can be with other people / Without having anyone at all.”
As a longtime believer that Mitski doesn’t have a single bad album, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” only affirms it for me. She told The Current, “the general character I had in mind for this album concept is this sort of reclusive, weird woman living alone in an old house that maybe she inherited but can’t exactly manage.” This is perhaps the closest she has come to a concept album, and the recurring image of cats strengthens her creative cohesion without limiting her direction.
The restraint of “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” serves its theme well. Still, I can’t help but want more. I would love to see Mitski continue her folk journey and bring in more multi-instrumental elements and do more concept albums. Until then, I’ll listen to this one and embrace my inner tabby cat about to be pounced on—blissfully unaware.
