O Mitski, does it get better? As often as I direct that unanswerable question to one of my favorite artists, I have also always resisted the simplistic labeling of Mitski as “sad girl music.” Mistki’s albums always have a lot to offer in terms of emotional registers, and her most recent album, released on Feb. 27, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, demonstrates her wide range once again. 

One can find an abundance of solace in Mistki’s music. I don’t care how popular “My Love Mine All Mine” gets; its popularity has never sullied my experience of humming to the lullaby-like tune of “Nothing in the world is mine for free / But my love, mine, all mine, all mine,” a soothing reaffirmation that love is the one inexhaustible resource that I should never regret giving out. In her new album, love comes in the shape of cats. Cuddling up next to the newly heartbroken narrator of the song “Cats,” the feline protectors fall asleep as she sings softly of acceptance: “I won’t leave you ’cause I still love you / So it’s up to you if you choose to go.” In an interview with World Cafe, Mitski talked about how cats are often cast as “evil” because, unlike dogs, they are disobedient, coming and going as they please. In recognizing that this exact freedom to be “out following their heart’s delights” is the quality she loves about her rescue cats, the narrator comes to accept letting her lover go. 

It’s been 12 years since the release of the bittersweet song “First Love / Late Spring” (which, as I found out to my devastation, was performed at the Horn in 2017) on the album Bury Me at Makeout Creek. Yet Mitski still manages to floor me with how viscerally she’s able to capture first love in her new album. Over banjo accompaniment, the narrator of “In a Lake” makes her listeners take a trip down memory lane that she herself avoids: “Where you never get away from your first love / It’s like one brand of soap sold in town / ‘Cause anyone you can get close to / smells like your first time around.” The evocation of smell, one of nostalgia’s strongest triggers, and the implication that memories of first love assail you unexpectedly and linger like soap fragrance — Mitski’s lyricism rightfully has a space in the hearts of the poets among her listeners. It certainly helps that her poetry is accompanied by a swelling progression that brings listeners to a triumphant-sounding horn-backed climax before letting us off gently again.

One would be remiss to disregard the more upbeat side of Mitski’s discography. Sure, the 2018 album Be The Cowboy’s lead single “Nobody” may have seared the devastating “I’ve been big and small and big and small and big and small again / And still nobody wants me,” into my brain, but I maintain that it’s a song one can rollerskate to. In fact, the ironic contrast between the self-deprecating lyrics and the danceable instrumentation on some of her songs makes for the perfect experience of, rather than denying your sadness, acknowledging it while shimmying your way out of it.

Similarly, “Where’s My Phone” is among the more rock-heavy tracks on her new album. The manic, fuzzy guitar solo at the end, coupled with the rhythmic chanting “Pa-pa-pa,” evokes the image of a madwoman skipping down the street, perfectly content with the fact that she keeps “thinking, ‘Surely, somebody will save me’ / At every turn, I learn that no one will.” In one of my favorite tracks on the album, “Rules,” the madwoman goes out again to meet her former lover while counting all the rules of the game that she’d better keep in mind, including “number three, you will ruin me,” the joyous horn accompanying her footsteps. 

Mitski ruminates about death (a lot) in this album. But in her defense, some lingering on memento mori is probably healthy, especially if it comes with a certain indignation about the pointlessness of “gotta go to work.” For what, you may ask? “To pay for that cat’s house.” The inspiration for the song “That White Cat,” Mitski recounts in an interview with Dazed, was an existential moment in which she saw a cat “marked” her house (possibly by doing what animals do to mark their territories). It prompted her to think about the effort she’s put into preserving parts of her life that can be upended at any moment. The hypnotic, drum-driven track that does justice to the album’s categorization as “rock” was thus created. 

In “Lightning,” the last track on the album, Mitski earnestly calls out “Polo” to the lightning, beckoning it to come find her so that she can “be born again.” While I’m not taking any actionable suggestions, especially in the current mercurial Gambier weather, there are a lot of other emotions I can take from Nothing’s About to Happen to Me: self-acceptance, affection for cats, dangerous nostalgia and a zest for life despite the occasional manic anger.