She seems to have finally come to terms with her status as a darling of the indie circus and object of desire of a frenetic fan culture – in any case, in recent years Mitski has no longer flirted with leaving the music business once and for all, as she did in 2019 after her breakthrough with her fifth album BE THE COWBOY. On the contrary, last year she embraced her status with a concert film and a live album. That’s what you call reaching rock star status.
So it’s time for something new again, time for the next reinvention, as Mitski has tried to do with every album in her career. That’s the case this time too, at least in part, because NOTHING’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO ME, which she once again recorded with her home producer Patrick Hyland, could be seen as a continuation of the last album with its Americana and indie rock tendencies – on the one hand. Because on the other hand, the album has its own character again, we wouldn’t expect it otherwise from Mitski, who has taken on a new identity with each album in recent years, or has shed light on a different aspect of the ongoing theme of “strange woman against an even stranger world”.
You can hear a Mitski who is at peace in her own, quirky way
NOTHING’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO ME stays true to this subject, but you hear a Mitski who, in her own, quirky way, is at peace with herself and has found peace with her own quarrels with the world. In the video for the announcement single “Where’s My Phone?” For example, we see a cranky and eccentric, but also desperate Mitski, who wants to protect her sister from strange intruders. It makes sense to think of her own discomfort with the public’s intrusion. But the Japanese-born American artist isn’t in the mood to just complain; no, she delivers a terrific elegy about cell phone addiction and crashes in an indie rock outfit.
And let’s stick with the word “rock”, because hardly anyone lets the electric guitars rip more beautifully than Mitski, for example on “If I Leave”, in which she sings beautifully and powerfully about love and existential crisis, and which draws its strength from the contrast between atmospheric minimalism and loud outbursts, very similar to the closer “Lightning”. The loungey “I’ll Change For You” works completely differently, settling somewhere between Sixties charm, Sade and synthpop bands like Tops. But Mitski seems to prefer to live out her love for the most diverse varieties of Americana, for example in the jukebox hit “Rules”, the ballad “Cars” or “Charon’s Obol” with its gospel quotes.
The strongest is the dark Americana nightmare “Dead Women”, which is reminiscent of a necromancy. Like the wonderfully strange “That White Cat”, which, in contrast to “Dead Women”, sings of its ghosts with exuberant energy. Emotional low points like “Bug Like An Angel” from the last album are missing this time; we are more likely dealing with a cat lady who is tired of the nonsense out there and is creating her own world. How nice that she allowed us entry.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
