Mitski

henceforth the first 3 and closing song on this are to be known as the Working For The Knife EP, a sterling continuation from the form of Be The Cowboy, nothing else happened here

see "stay soft" is one that doesn't work at all for me

I am a sucker for juicy chord changes tbf

henceforth the first 3 and closing song on this are to be known as the Working For The Knife EP, a sterling continuation from the form of Be The Cowboy, nothing else happened here

This but swapping track 3 for track 4. The opening track is astonishing! Cyberpunk gothic.

You are the only person on the internet who likes track 4 :p

yeah thought it was just me but the album is ... nice, but doesn't sufficiently differentiate itself from her last one, nothing really sticks out. might be a grower though. I certainly don't dislike it.

Okay, I was wrong. Stay Soft is incredible.

I really like the album. It's not quite as glorious as Be The Cowboy, but I do think the songs are there despite the sheen of the music. Everyone is a slight mood killer although I do really like that ABBA style piano that comes in. Be The Cowboy had A Horse Named Called Air which I thought was way worse.

Does anyone know what the title of this album means / refers to?

“Laurel Hell is a term from the Southern Appalachians in the US, where laurel bushes basically grow in these dense thickets. When you get stuck in these thickets, you can’t get out. Or so the story goes.”

“And so there are a lot of Laurel Hells in America, in the South, where they’re named after the people who died within them because they were stuck. The thing is, laurel flowers are so pretty. They just burst into these explosions of just beauty. And, I just, I liked the notion of being stuck inside this explosion of flowers and perhaps even dying within one of them.”

https://www.thefocus.news/music/laurel-hell-meaning/

Thx!

Saw a huge ad for her album which is just a close up of her face and for a second I thought it was bjork

keep thinking it's one of those portmanteau super-ilxor names

Liking the album though it's very dour. The last song stood out to me the most.

Her streaming numbers are crazy. 202 million plays on Spotify for Washing Machine Heart? Is this a TikTok thing?

"washing machine heart" was a tiktok hit yeah

her other big songs are still in the hundreds of million, though.

it makes sense that she has a massive cult following. she is a genius. like sylvia plath, she is confessional but not sentimental.

"Should've Been Me," more like should've been acknowledged as a perfect song

first Mitski album where I love every song

Laurel Hell that is

The title fucks me up because I always read it as Laurel Halo, and then I'm like no, wait a minute, it's Mitski.

new track imminent with album to follow, I'm wondering if too many people lost interest after Laurel Hell

https://pitchfork.com/news/mitski-announces-new-album-the-land-is-inhospitable-and-so-are-we-new-song-out-next-week/

Why would anyone have lost interest? Laurel Hell is fabulous.

It never grabbed me completely, I should revisit it.

Felt lackluster after Be The Cowboy, not bad just missing something.

I didn't love Laurel Hell or even Be The Cowboy like I did Bury Me and Puberty 2, but I'm still plenty interested. The unexpected choir in "Bug Like An Angel" is great!

xp Its critical reception was certainly less rapturous, though I'm sure the TikTok teens will still show up for her

be the cowboy fucking ruled.

mitski 4ever but she will never reach the same heights of popularity that she did in her early albums. this is because our collective misery has caught up with her personal misery, which she mines so expertly, with brutal irony.

like, you can't listen to this stuff if you are in the throes of an actual depressive episode. you can only enjoy it when you are the other side and then you can shudder and be like "ooh, i remember that," it's like dancing with the devil. the pleasure in this music isn't catharsis it's something else.

I always want you when I'm finally fine
How you'd be over me looking in my eyes when I come
Someone to watch me die, someone to watch me die

the new single is actually awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8r1M9R9Gf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zSHu-fY-yM

new singles are quite nice

Even more than usual, these remind me of a certain other current songwriter I'm a fan of. Star builds with customary economy to a lovely intensity though, and I'm looking forward to the album

Heaven a bit drab mind

"star" is definitely the better of the two, the build is very nice

which songwriter are you thinking of

the right honourable Natalie Mering ofc

oh yeah i hear that but i definitely like these more than the last weyes blood album

Star definitely better than most of it yeah

Have always maintained they share (exquisite) melodic sensibilities at times

new album is quite nice, lovely arrangements

you can hear her formerly brilliant melodic sensibility erode over the course of the opening track. arrangements have triumphed over songwriting. the rest of this had best be an improvement

hmm. nah. 'i don't like my mind' is really good. the rest is largely dull. 'star' grew off me a bit but probably the best of the rest. poor Mitski, they did a number on her eh

I’m more a Mitski tourist, but listening to it with my superfan daughter I really liked “My Love Mine All Mine” and “I’m Your Man”. Agree the arrangements are complex and interesting.

Apart from one here and there, Mitski seems to write impressions of songs rather than actual songs. Sometimes I'm in the mood for that and sometimes I'm not, but this is a very nice *sounding* album, whereas Laurel Hell had some earwormy hooks but the soundscape was about 7 years too late.

only listened to this once but I agree with that; the last album kind of washed past me and I rarely want to revisit it, but this seems like a return to the things I liked about everything before that. I do think the background vox in the first song are mixed way too high though

The crazy loud BG vox have to be a deliberately jarring choice, no? I kind of wish the rest of the album had similarly brave/weird choices. Def like this more than the last one already, but … I don’t think her recent songs have been distinctive enough to stand up next to Puberty 2 and Makeout Creek.

As a songwriter she reminds me of Neko Case — the words obviously come first and then get shoehorned into aimless melodies (with some standout exceptions in both cases). Each has a style that’s unmistakably her own, but within that style there’s a lot of interchangeable, middling material.

it's definitely a deliberately jarring choice, it just annoys me is all

everywhere I'm seeing 'best since Puberty/Makeout' it's like seriously are we just gonna straight up erase one of the best albums of recent years

by that do you mean be the cowboy or laurel hell

lol c'mon