Mitski’s Laurel Hell: a Return to the Spotlight
March 1, 2022 • Written by Sabrine Daunch
“Let’s step carefully into the dark, once we’re in I’ll remember my way around.”
In her highly anticipated return, Mitski opens her album Laurel Hell with a cautious introduction that gradually gains footing, before exploding into a cathartic eruption of sound that sets the stage for this synth-y 80s revival piece. Following along from Lush all the way through Be the Cowboy, this album feels like a natural development in the collection that is Mitski’s work. It’s heavy and cinematic, with spots of humor and tension in her juxtaposition of peppy synths and mournful lyrics in songs like The Only Heartbreaker and Love Me More. (The kind of humor one might expect of an artist who named her third album after a line from The Simpsons.)
In the grittier single: Working for the Knife, Mitski gives listeners a glimpse into her frustrations regarding her musical career and creative work. After the immense successes of Puberty 2 and Be the Cowboy, the burnout of constant marketing and performing led Mitski to leave social media and recede into hiatus in 2019. The effects of endless work, in tandem with a growing feeling of making music for the sake of profits and popularity and “keeping the machine running,” (as described by Mitski in a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone) are well-expressed in this piece with a consistent metallic beat that pushes the song forward, through its dips and swells of synths and guitar. Mitski’s qualms with the music industry continue two songs later in Everyone, with the monotonous beat and flat vocal quality pulling listeners through the song and its message. In recent interviews with Rolling Stone and Crack Magazine, Mitski has opened up about how she had to force herself and her heart into a state of numbness to cope with essentially being marketed and sold as a product to her audience, subsequently finding that the numbness was killing her writing. The song’s denouement, “And I opened my arms wide to the dark / I said, ‘take it all, whatever you want’,” finally followed up with “I didn’t know that I was young / I didn’t know what it would take,” dredges up a feeling of mourning for her past self, acknowledging the hurt her career has put her through.
Mitski moves on to break the “sad girl indie” mold that she’s been assigned in Should’ve Been Me; offering up a very Hall and Oates inspired level of pep, giving us a sound that heavily contrasts its more melancholy lyrics. It’s very reminiscent of her older, more structured narrative songs with a story about a past lover who’s replaced her, but it still manages to lead back to the album’s original themes of loneliness and disillusioned burnout. The opening lyrics, “well I went through my list of friends and found / I had no one to tell / of this overwhelming clean feeling,” concisely describe the way constant moving and touring had left Mitski with little attachment to things, and no fear of losing them when she inevitably had to leave. Some fans have said that this song feels uncharacteristically upbeat for Mitski, but its sound seems perfectly on-brand with some of her older songs like the iconic breakout Nobody and the more punchy, punk-inspired A Loving Feeling. It’s a practice Mitski has described recently, how she finds it “easier to allow a song in when the message might be depressing or dark, but has a veneer of happiness.” (Crack Magazine).
The album closes out with a frail and hopeful serenade, followed by a bright, disco-inspired ballad in I Guess and That’s Our Lamp. The former feels like an ode to the audience, with heartfelt thanks and shimmery uncertain tones that create a break in between the two high-energy tracks that surround it. The latter, an abrupt explosion of melody that’s reminiscent of the soundtrack to a vintage movie’s final scene. As the ending instrumentals slowly get busier and busier and drown out the vocals, you can almost visualize a 1970s Chevy driving off into the sunset as the music gently fades and credits begin to roll, putting a final pin in this flashy and eclectic collection. Blowing a kiss goodbye to fans, posing the question of whether or not Mitski will be here to stay after this.
