When I was in college, a writing professor told my class that, in a short story, “the action can all be internal.” I would later realize what this meant: a car chase or explosion is not necessary to entertain a reader. Emotional tension can be just as enticing.
On the eighth studio album by the singer-songwriter Mitski, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, the isolation of the narrator proves a similar point. Expanding on the country and folk influences of her previous record, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, Mitski creates a character who cultivates a rich inner life from the inside of an unkempt house, finding companionship in animals as she mourns the end of a romantic relationship.
Like a plot twist in a novel, the album’s tenth track, “Charon’s Obol”, reveals the circumstances of the protagonist’s isolation: she purchased a house where several girls had died, and every night she feeds their dogs. These dogs, implied to be ghosts haunting the house of their former owners, represent the narrator’s ability to find love in unlikely places: “Her heart was like a drawer / She only opened it when she went/ out to feed the dogs.”
In Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, when a scene takes place outside the narrator’s house, it depicts isolation as a fulfilling alternative. In “I’ll Change For You”, Mitski leaves a bar at closing time, saying, “I’m loitering outside / Watching all the cars passing by / Like a kid waiting for my ride.” In “In a Lake”, she, in a small town, worries about running into ex-lovers and reliving painful memories. Presenting an alternative for herself, she says, “But in a lake you can backstroke forever.” Although a lake, like a small town, is a self-contained entity, a body of water allows for infinite exploration.
“Cats” is a peaceful country-folk ballad backed by a steel guitar, in which the narrator lets go of her pets in the same way she moved on from an ex-lover: “I’ll be glad to know / They’re out following / Their hearts delight.” The song captures the tonal departure of Nothing’s About to Happen to Me from Mitski’s previous work. Although the TikTok hit “My Love Mine All Mine”, from The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, is an acoustic tune similar to the content of Nothing, as a whole, the former record maintains Mitski’s signature angst. Meanwhile, the electric guitar-backed “Where’s My Phone”, on Nothing, is an outlier.
A few moments of rock spectacle on the new album accentuate the project’s overall restraint. The guitar explosion in the final chorus of “In a Lake” is an acceptance of anger, not a display of it. In a press release for the record, a publicist suggested taking the following quotation, from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, into consideration when reviewing: “I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look…to the front door with a white cat on the step.”
In keeping with this reference, Nothing includes a track called “That White Cat”, where Mitski’s narrator accepts change in an environment she once controlled, saying, “It’s supposed to be my house / But I guess according to the cats / Now it’s his house.”
Personal transformation can happen at unexpected times. As Mitski notes, isolation has its pitfalls: “Surely somebody will save me / At every turn I learn that no one will,” she says on “Where’s My Phone”. By staying indoors, the character of Nothing’s About to Happen to Me finds peace, allowing her to view the outside world with sympathy.
Mitski’s 2022 album, Laurel Hell, is named after a deadly thicket found on the Appalachian Trail, a metaphor for the stifling nature of fame. By retreating from the spotlight, both musically and conceptually, on Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, Mitski protects her creativity so she can continue sharing it sustainably. Like the cat on the album’s cover, who stares at the viewer with dark, piercing eyes, Mitski may be reclusive, but she contains enough depth to fill multiple lives.