Mitski - Nothing's About To Happen To Me

Mitski's eighth studio album picks up where The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We left off, at least insofar as that it employs both a live band and an orchestra and revisits that album's juxtaposition of misty country and jagged indie rock. Where it differs is in its framing as a concept album about a woman whose internal catastrophizing further complicates her struggles with both home life and fitting in outside. Titled Nothing's About to Happen to Me, it opens with "In a Lake," which begins as a light country ballad about not wanting to live in a small town.  As she goes on to consider living in a lake, she adds chaotic rock and orchestral accompaniment as well as street recordings to the mix, cranking up the volume and the anxiety in the process of a making her decision. By the time we reach the end of the album's 11 tracks, as reflective rocker "Lightning" opens with the words "Lightning hit so close/Sounded like a big tin can/All hail the rain/Running like ghosts on the roof," it's become clear that things are worse in her head even if threats abound. Full of dark, dark humor and produced by her longtime collaborator Patrick Hyland, Nothing's About to Happen to Me may be the Mitski-est Mitski album yet, despite its character-driven nature and partly because, at least on some level, it captures the anxiety of the Zeitgeist of its time. ~Marcy Donelson, allmusic.com