Mitski has announced Laurel Hell, her new album, out 4th February on Dead Oceans, and unveiled a striking accompanying new single/video, ‘The Only Heartbreaker.’ Co-written with Dan Wilson, and the first such song in her discography, it gradually envelopes with pulsing synths and a majestic vocal punctuated by swelling choruses woven with deceptively straightforward lyrics whose sincere refrain takes a twist as it depicts “the person always messing up in the relationship, the designated Bad Guy who gets the blame It could simply be about that, but I also wanted to depict something sadder beneath the surface.that maybe the reason you’re always the one making mistakes is because you’re the only one trying.”
‘The Only Heartbreaker’ video, co-directed by Maegan Houang and Jeff Desom, presents the bewildering experience of Mitski’s first time being filmed almost entirely in front of a green screen. Houang comments, “The worst pain I’ve experienced is when I’ve fully understood the pain I’ve caused another. It’s one of the hardest parts of being human, that no matter our intentions, we’ll inevitably do something hurtful to our fellow man, if not someone we love. In this case, the harm Mitski enacts in the video is to the world. It’s unstoppable and destructive, but worst of all, she doesn’t even want it to happen. She’s a stand-in for humanity as we collectively do so little to save ourselves and our planet.”
“Laurel Hell is a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love. “I accept it all,” she promises. “I forgive it all.” It cements Mitski’s reputation as an artist who possesses the power of turning our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them.”
“In 2018 Be the Cowboy launched Mitski from cult favourite to indie star, she ascended amid a fever of national division. The grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit, as expressed in Be the Cowboy was driven by personas of female strength and defiance that, however compelling, amounted to the musician “putting on different masks.” Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap—one that tightens the more you struggle. “I got to a point,” Mitski admits, “where I just knew that if I kept going this way, I would numb myself to completion.”
Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, Mitski began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them. “I needed love songs about real relationships that are not power struggles to be won or lost,” she explains. “I needed songs that could help me forgive both others and myself. I make mistakes all the time. I don’t want to put on a front where I’m a role model, but I’m also not a bad person. I needed to create this space mostly for myself where I sat in that gray area.”
Mitski wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, and the album was finished being mixed in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world.”
Lauren Hell Tracklist
1. Valentine, Texas
2. Working for the Knife
3. Stay Soft
4. Everyone
5. Heat Lightning
6. The Only Heartbreaker
7. Love Me More
8. There’s Nothing Left For You
9. Should’ve Been Me
10. I Guess
11. That’s Our Lamp
Photo credit – Ebru Yildiz