Laurel Hell

Description

We don’t usually turn to pop albums to analyze an era, let alone fill the inner void left in the wake of a global catastrophe. But sometimes artists achieve this ambitious result, recounting it all in a formal approach. Laurel Hell confirms Mitski’s reputation as an artist who possesses this 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 stardom. The touring routine, and her increased and growing visibility, had a great impact on Mitski, both on her music and her spirit. Honors, public perception, the intoxicating prism of the Internet—all of this can offer a seductive facade that in fact masks a deadly trap, a trap that tightens as one struggles against it. Exhausted by this distorting mirror, Mitski began to write songs that removed 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 album's mixing was completed in 2021. This is the longest time Mitski has ever spent on a record, a process that ended in a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her long-time 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, sorrow and pleasure, error and transcendence coexist as ingredients of our humanity, and where all these feelings are considered worthy of recognition and, consequently, of love.