Should Mitski have stayed a TikTok trending sound? Is NATHTM as experimental as the marketing led us to believe?
IS MITSKI A REGULAR ON OUR PLAYLISTS?
No. And probably won’t be.
Chamber pop meets rock meets teenage poetry in song form. It’s very easy to understand why there seems to be a phenomenal amount of teens and early 20’s in love with Mitski. That’s not to say there isn’t any depth in the work, but occasionally the lyrics do slide into a teenagery melodramatic style.
Maybe it is something in the way that the songs feel artificially spiced up with some rock or some real-world textures. But it’s repeated a little to often to have a decent impact.
Sidenote: Two things that don’t totally go hand in hand are a quote from Mitski saying Sad Girl is over, and then releasing another album that fits firmly into that category.
Musically, the album is good; it thrums along with little to no deviation per track. But, according to fans, it is an intentional move for the album to glide into The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. And the reason we’re saying this is because, for us, after LIGHTNING finished, I’M YOUR MAN came on, thanks to autoplay, and we thought it was still NATHTM.
Conceptually, because this is a concept in album form, it sits evenly in the ‘isolated women narrating her isolation’. She is precise with her lyrics, though some lack the depth and nuance we would’ve appreciated. CATS felt like one of the most perfect tracks on the album; it had a distinct Joni Mitchell flavor.
There is some art in the way she has woven deeply suicidal ideation or the obsession with death, physical and metaphorical, with dancing keys and steel. For fans of Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, you’d do well to listen to both DEAD WOMAN and CHARON’S OBOL. While not as violent in delivery and a tad more conceptual, you’ll likely appreciate the storytelling.
NATHTM doesn’t feel radical; it doesn’t bite; it simply doesn’t have the teeth for it. Perhaps the passiveness is deliberate, perhaps the nothing that is about to happen is this album. Maybe somewhere in all this, the message is that Mitski is happily retreating into a house filled with cats and doom.
Or maybe we’re giving her too much credit for an album that says and does nothing when it isn’t earned. We may never know.
It’s sonically fine. Vocally fine. Lyrically fine.
But perhaps it is time to stop the glaze.
2/5 Cups
