Mitski has teased the first details of her upcoming eighth studio album, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, dropping on February 27. Along with the lead single, “Where’s My Phone?” Mitski released a mysterious website that displays a phone number.
Calling the phone number leads to a recording of Mitski reading a quote from Shirley Jackson’s horror novel The Haunting of Hill House. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality,” she says. “Even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
The website also features an image of a cell phone, and all the calls appear in the notification center. Phone numbers are censored or listed as Anonymous, but texts also appear. Personally, I watched in real time as my text message (“can’t wait to tell my bus driver there’s new Mitski”) popped up on the cracked screen. Additionally, a permanent notification from The Tansy House at the top reveals the album title.
In a press release via Rolling Stone, Mitski shared a few details about the upcoming album. It’s described as a “rich narrative whose main character is a reclusive woman in an unkempt house. Outside of her home, she is a deviant. Inside of her home, she is free.”
Mitski Dives Deep Into Anxiety-Inducing Horror Elements For New Album
Other references and inspirations come from the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. The iconic film documents the reclusive lives of a mother and daughter, both named Edith Beale. Formerly upper-class, Big Edie and Little Edie had since declined into poverty, but remained isolated in their decaying mansion in East Hampton, New York.
In the video for “Where’s My Phone?” Mitski took further inspiration from Shirley Jackson. Her 1962 novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, centers around the Blackwood sisters, who retreat into their estate with their ailing uncle after a family tragedy. Mitski pulls these mind-altering themes of isolation, ostracism, and threat into the visuals for “Where’s My Phone?”
Overall, the track, and presumably the album as a whole, features a manic sort of loneliness that goes beyond what Mitski explored on her previous album. On The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, the isolation felt endlessly wide, like a rural open field. There was more of a sense of isolation by choice than reclusiveness by necessity.
On Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, the isolation feels like it turns inward, frenzied, and claustrophobic. So far, it creates a feeling of being trapped somewhere that’s falling apart around you. Maybe that’s a literal place, like The Tansy House that Mitski has created. Or maybe it’s an inner isolation, so deep in the psyche that it forces you to claw your way out.
Photo by Rune Hellestad Corbis/ Corbis via Getty Images
The post Isolation, Deviance, and Decay: Mitski Takes Inspiration From Reclusive Horror Tales for Upcoming Album appeared first on VICE.
