Mitski’s Electrifying Return
“Laurel Hell” weaves in feelings of love, loneliness and dread in an 80s synth-pop sound
Mitski has been an artist slowly paving the music scene. During her time at SUNY Purchase College’s Conservatory of Music, she studied music composition and self-released her first two albums, “Lush” and “Retired from Sad, New Career in Business.” Heading into the release of her fifth album, “Be the Cowboy,” she received critical acclaim from publications such as Vulture, Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound.
However, during her performance in Central Park of the Be the Cowboy Tour, she announced that it would be her last performance indefinitely. In early 2020, she had changed her mind and was working on music as she owed it to herself and her label to release another album.
On Feb. 4, Mitski released her sixth album titled, “Laurel Hell.” The album marks the musician’s return from a four-year hiatus after “Be the Cowboy.”
Produced before and during COVID-19, Mitski explores the feelings of love ruptured in an undetermined pathway which bleeds of mysticism and vulnerability.
On The Zane Lowe Show, Mitski stated that the album title originated in 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.” Much like the album’s title, the front cover illustrates Mitski flushed in red and enraptured by slashes of static as her eyes are closed — concealing her line of sight. Her exotic, electrifying and dark image in this cover comes to be representative of the many songs from this album.
Consisting of 12 songs, the album heavily meshes genres of disco, new wave, indie pop and electronic rock. While her previous albums struggled to find a central sound, “Laurel Hell” digresses into a heavy 80s synth-pop sound.
Mitski introduces the album with “Heart of Darkness,” where insidious organ sounds accompany terrifying lyrics of “Let’s drive out where dust devils are made.” However, she breaks away from the eery tension to introduce a light breakaway of piano chords. The dipping between dark, arresting sounds to an amplified piano resembles The Cure’s “Plainsong.”
In songs like “Love Me More,” she alludes to themes of love by conjuring lyrics, “I need you to love me more / Love me more, love me more / Love enough to drown it out.”
While the chorus is sung alongside light, electrifying synth chords, the lyrics insinuate a different expression. Here, the song depicts a begging of love to fill an emotional void, but the emotional pain deepens into her desperation to cover those feelings out.
For songs like “Working for the Knife,” Mitski threads images of a protagonist lamenting about their dreaded career. The song chimes in with slow percussionist tappings alongside an ominous THX-like sound recording. She half-heartedly sings, “I start the day high and it ends so low / ‘Cause I’m working for the knife.”
She finalizes the album with the track “That’s our Lamp.” She threads in the lyrics, “We may be ending / I’m standing in the dark.” The protagonist comes to the realization of the end of a relationship and the emptied feelings associated with its departure. However, the song is amped with robust steely taps and guided by groovy basses suggesting a thrilling end to this departure.
While the album was a long-time coming, Mitski proves that she has a lot more to show under her discography as she defines her artistry.