Mitski - Laurel Hell (February 4th, 2022)

We don't typically look to pop albums to answer our cultural moment, let alone to meet the soul hunger left in the wake of global catastrophe. But occasionally, an artist proves the form more malleable and capacious than we knew. With Laurel Hell, Mitski cements her reputation as an artist in possession of such power - capable of using her talent to perform the alchemy that turns our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them. Her critically beloved last album, Be the Cowboy, built on the breakout acclaim of 2016's Puberty 2 and launched her from cult favorite to indie star. She ascended amid a fever of national division, and the grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit. Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap _ one that tightens the more you struggle. Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, she began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them. She wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, while the album finished mixing in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland throughout the isolation of a global pandemic, during which some of the songs "slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower." Sometimes it's hard to see the change when you're the agent of it, but for the lucky rest of us, Mitski has written a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love.

1. Valentine, Texas
2. Working For The Knife
3. Stay Soft
4. Everyone
5. Heat Lightning
6. The Only Heartbreaker
7. Love Me More
8. There's Nothing Left For You
9. Should've Been Me
10. I Guess
11. That's Our Lamp

 

Let's get this party started

 

I don't think my fragile feelings are prepared for this one.

 

Pre-ordered the deluxe version from HHV!

 

FEBRUARY 2022 IS NUTS

 

Write up is kinda silly lol excited for the record though

 

there is sooooooo much coming in feb my god

 

Feb 4th*

 

Holy fuck

 

It's all happening today

 

Yess

 

mistki thank you

 

hope i like this one more than the last

 

so excited!

 

Laurel Hell - Mitski | Secretly Store

 

Not really into vinyl anymore, but I copped that shirt

 

snagged that red/black vinyl

 

I don’t love either new song enough to pull the trigger yet. But I think both are solid.

 

A big ol HELL YEAH to the new album and the new song and UGH IS IT FEBRUARY YET

 

Great song, will wait to grab a vinyl at a live show though

 

Laurel Hell Yeah

 

That’s more like it.

 

this song rules. February is so stacked.

 

Where's that blurb from?

The alt CD covers are pretty cool.

 

Label shop