Laurel Hell

Description

We generally do not turn to pop albums to analyze an era, let alone to address the inner void left in the wake of a global catastrophe. But sometimes artists manage to achieve this ambitious result, capturing all of that in a formal approach. Laurel Hell confirms Mitski's reputation as an artist who possesses the power to transform our wildest and most alienated experiences into the very elixir that heals them. Her latest album, the acclaimed Be the Cowboy, built on the resounding success of Puberty 2 in 2016 and propelled her to indie star status. The routine of touring, along with her increased and growing visibility, had a significant impact on Mitski, both on her music and her spirit. The accolades, public perception, the intoxicating prism of the Internet—all of this can offer a seductive facade that actually masks a deadly trap, a trap that tightens as one struggles against it. Exhausted by this distorting mirror, Mitski began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities found behind them. Most of the songs on Laurel Hell were written in 2018 or earlier, and the mixing of the album was completed in 2021. This is the longest period Mitski has ever spent on a record, a process that concluded in a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, throughout a global pandemic, during which some of the songs slowly took on new forms and meanings. Laurel Hell is the soundtrack for a transformation, a place where vulnerability and resilience, grief and pleasure, mistakes and transcendence coexist as ingredients of our humanity, and where all these feelings are regarded as worthy of recognition and, consequently, love.