Mitski has a talent for creating unique and unifying sounds for her albums. In the same way the acoustic arrangements of her previous album, 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, leaned close to folk, the pedal steel, organ and strings of her eighth album, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, approaches country territory. The narrative style of the lyrics – and a mention of Death “moseying” away – suggests that living in Nashville may have rubbed off on her.
This is present from opening song ‘In a Lake’, a twangy treatise on the pitfalls of living in a small town. Accordion and a lazily strummed banjo combust in a dramatic swell in the outro, a progression Mitski repeats frequently. Orchestral arrangements creep along quietly throughout Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, whether creating cinematic emphasis, providing a Burt Bacharach romanticism, or balancing out her familiar blister of guitar.
Mitski has a powerful voice, but the way she reins it in on Nothing’s About to Happen to Me creates some of the most affecting moments. Back-to-back songs ‘Cats’ and ‘If I Leave’ give different perspectives on the same failed relationship. ‘If I Leave’, the scenario where Mitski makes the choice to end things, has the explosive vocal outburst set amid jagged bass and brash guitar. But it’s the counterpoint in ‘Cats’, with its gentle pedal steel and horns, that is quietly aching and lingers in its melancholy.
She uses that same light touch on ‘Instead of Here’, a slow and haunting song of dissociation and suicidal ideation with threads of pedal steel weaving throughout it. In the wrong hands, it could easily strike a mawkish tone, but Mitski’s resolute delivery and just-opaque-enough lyrical choices produce something heartbreaking.
It’s in keeping with the mild death obsession that runs through her catalogue, which blooms to greater proportion elsewhere in Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. ‘Dead Women’ and ‘Charon’s Obol’ both relay tales of violence in a murder ballad tradition. Each song leans more towards the country music end of Nothing’s spectrum with their strong storytelling approaches and pedal steel – ‘Charon’s Obol’ with its choral backing and fiddle, ‘Dead Women’ with its skittering keyboards and orchestral crescendo finish. But unlike standard murder ballads, Mitski’s women have agency, underscored by the restraint in her voice. The main character of ‘Charon’s Obol’ excises spirits in a house where other women met their end. And when on ‘Dead Women’ she asks in her chilling whisper, “Would you have liked me better if I’d had died / So you could tell my story the way it ought to be?’, Mitski makes it clear that her identity, her creativity, her story are hers to control.
