With the release of her latest project, titled Laurel Hell, audiences are once again submerged in Mitski’s drowning blues in one of the best albums of 2022.

By Ian Eisenbrand

A warm, droning synth disturbs the still oceans of “Valentine, Texas,” the opening track of generational songwriter Mitski’s sixth project. These currents quietly build into a massive swell, a tidal wave forming its cresting peak under the misty echoes of Mitski's vocals. Suddenly, the wave breaks, crashing into whitewater as glistening synth pads, poignant strings, and dry acoustic drums wash over a shoreline of blood red sand. As water engulfs the coast, the tide sweeps what was once the waterfront into Laurel Hell, a maritime world of heartbreak. 

The thematic focus of Laurel Hell rests predominantly in the poetry of Mitski’s forlorn ruminations, a proclivity that can be found throughout Mitski’s discography. Though Laurel Hell’s obedience of this propensity is likely not a surprise to most of her audience, the album may hold the most strikingly despondent story of Mitski’s career. Mitski weaves a Shakespearean tragedy through the album’s tracklist, illustrating the collapse of a love grounded by nothing more than foregone moments left to decay in aching memories. A catalog of yellowed postcards pile in the runtime of Laurel Hell, chronicling the corrosion of Mitski’s crumbling matrimony. Tracks such as “Working for the Knife” and “Love Me More” expose the tender wounds of heartbreak as they were at first conception, salting the wounds with the aloof brush of a cold, caressing hand. 

A fruitless resolution to the unrelenting misery of Laurel Hell can be found in the ethereal landscapes of “There’s Nothing Left for You.” The piece serves as a moment of admittance in the tracklist, with Mitski finally ceasing her resistance to the inevitable demise of her relationship. The track buds in a womb of soft liquid synth pulses, gently drowning the love subjected in Laurel Hell in the verity of the relationship’s end. Mitski’s bleak embrace of her love’s ruin is then suddenly born into a fire of crashing drums and electric guitars alongside dense layers of harmonies between emotive vocals from Mitski and rising synth string sections. Tragically, this catharsis is extinguished as quickly as it was ignited, the washing cacophony of heartbreak quickly being hushed into the shallow sleep of utero again, as if Mitski’s liberation was never delivered in the first place. 

As the album slowly wrings out her vitality, there is little effort made to shroud the desolate panorama left imprinted across the project by the irrepressible seeping of blood from Mitski’s broken heart. The album is not infrequent with its flagrant proclamation of hopeless defeat, including on the track “Heat Lightning,” which realizes its core in the harrowing refrain “There’s nothing I can do, not much I can change.” Mitski employs her iconic wavering vocal tones across the project, amplifying the inconsolable convictions of the album. Though some may find the project’s uninhibited anguish overwhelming, Laurel Hell’s utilization of its candid method of poetic delivery allows for the development of the absorbing narrative that guides the tracklist. The sorrows of Laurel Hell’s depths are then further exacerbated by the hulking gravity of Mitski's capacity as a poet and songwriter. In Mitski’s refusal to withhold any element of her despair, she still finds a way to masterfully exhibit the elevated and abstract lyrical style that has captivated her audience since her rise to prominence in the early 2010s. Laurel Hell is thoroughly laced with cryptic allegories and twisting metaphors, blurring the boundaries between the narrative of the album and the poetry of Mitski’s mind.

Laurel Hell and the intimate poetry it holds are built upon a wide variety of instrumental tones featured throughout the album. Production styles across the project range from bouncing synth-pop on tracks such as “The Only Heartbreaker” to willowing ambience on “I Guess.” While Laurel Hell does boast a dynamic production arrangement, these variations are grounded by the persistent presence of intoxicating artificial sweeteners concocted within the album's production. Beyond any general stylistic differences, nearly all of the instrumentals on Laurel Hell feature lush, glossy, and brimming production, contrasting the skeletal hallows of Mitski’s lyrics. The synthetic syrups manufactured in Laurel Hell’s bright production illustrate the album's somber themes in saturated watercolors, producing the paradox of a sugary melancholy in Mitski’s attitude throughout the project’s runtime. 

Regardless of its shimmering production, the philosophy of Laurel Hell does not grant Mitski any opportunity to fight against the currents it holds, nor does it provide the chance to tend to the wounds it fosters. Instead, it allows Mitski to be swept into the sea, giving into the blood red sand as it churns in the tide, coalescing into the crimson depths of her trauma. Laurel Hell does not impart any settlement of the tides, it instead proposes that the only escape can be found in the tossing depths of its waters. 

Mitski is currently touring Laurel Hell across the United States and Europe from February to June 2022. For those in the Syracuse area, there is a set at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on March 24, 2022.