Prolific singer-songwriter Mitski has added her newest album “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” to her discography. This addition follows her last album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We.” On that album, listeners enjoyed her biggest hit to date with “My Love Mine All Mine” among other swooning folk ballads such as “Heaven” and deeply introspective songs like “I’m Your Man.” 

To me, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” (NATHTM) feels like a proper evolution of “The Land,” adopting its American folk influences. The track “Charon’s Obol” carries the listener through a story of a woman moving into a new house, but every night at midnight, the dogs of all the dead women who had previously lived in that house approach her window and demand tribute. “Charon’s Obol” features an all-male choir, acoustic guitar, country swings, and a surprise violin solo. Together, this arrangement makes the track feel like an old western folk tale that’s beaten the test of time. 

Following the album’s themes of death and the afterlife, the conveniently named “Dead Women” is a haunting ghost story turned on its head. This track is from the perspective of a woman who’s been murdered for the sake of her living on in people’s memories. Her murderer selfishly cut her life short (“While I dream of flying, stab me twenty-seven times / Ransack the house for what you’ll auction, what you’ll keep”) so they can memorialize her and turn her life into what they please for their own sake (“Then embalm me up ’cause you’re hosting the viewing / Saying, ‘She gave her life so we could have her in our dreams’”). What I think this track does exceptionally well is its instrumentation and arrangement. While most of the track is Mitski singing over a solemn acoustic guitar, the chorus cascades into a ghostly orchestra that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of a mystery-ridden haunted house. 

While NATHTM is predominantly folk, there are some returns to her old rock sound like that of 2016’s “Puberty 2.” Personally, I think the lead single for NATHTM “Where’s My Phone” does this best. It’s chaotic, catchy, and demonstrates Mitski’s expertise at creating melodies. It even has an equally chaotic music video to go along with it, which is also one of the best music videos I’ve had the honor of viewing. But not every return to form can properly capture what made the originals so interesting. While “If I Leave” is similar to older songs like “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” it’s missing something special to push it to the best it can be. Its instrumentation features a lead guitar, a bass guitar, and drums and for 90% of the song they follow the same rhythm. Towards the end, they exploded into a climax, but it happened too late, had little build up and ended too soon. Overall, it left me wanting a lot more from it. 

Quite a few tracks off of this album suffer from not enough happening sonically, but that certainly doesn’t make any of them bad by any means. For example, both “Instead of Here” and “Cats” have a basic country sway, but nothing that makes them blow me away. Calmer tracks are always welcome, though “Cats” in particular did leave me a little bored. I like what the second single, “I’ll Change for You,” did. Even though there was no single moment that made the song great, she introduced an almost bosa nova sound for the first time which made the song really stand out against the folk/rock backdrop of the rest of the album. 

This album refines Mitski’s folk sound and intertwines it with the rock genre she moved on from years ago. However, I think she lost some of what made “The Land’s” folk and “Puberty 2’s” rock so special. Nonetheless, this is a great album rich in interesting melodies and poetic lyrics that you would expect from an artist like Mitski.