If the concept of liminal space were an album, it would be Mitski’s Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. Being her eighth studio album, it touches on many of her classic motifs: death, love, sex, and mental illness, while being underscored by the theme of the sticky, difficult nature of change. Uniquely, it also seems to almost take place entirely in one setting: a house overrun with desires, fear, and a lot of cats.
As a longtime fan of Mitski, to say I was excited for this album would be an understatement, and I’m happy to report that it didn’t disappoint. As always, her work feels like poetry accompanied by meaningful melodies. With 11 tracks on the album, alongside three music videos and eight lyric videos, there’s plenty to discuss.
However, any dialogue of the album is, in my opinion, rendered useless without discussion of its cover. Commissioned by painter Marc Burckhardt, it depicts a blue and yellow-eyed white cat sitting calmly on the ground, unfazed by a tabby frozen in a mid-air pounce that’s about to land. Its contrast with the album’s name is fascinating, as with a name about nothing happening, one wouldn’t expect a cover that displays action mid-frame.
The cover left me with a sense of anticipation and fear for the white cat. The album name, on the other hand, rather feels passive and defeatist. In this way, the cover and name seem to compete with each other, creating tension—the push and pull of change and its uncertain nature. This is the album in a nutshell: an in-between, or as I’ve dubbed it, liminal: transitional, surreal, nostalgic, and painful.
The first song on the album is my favorite. “In a Lake” opens the album with the strumming of a banjo. It details a similar topic to “Brand New City”, featured on Mitski’s album Lush, in a completely different way. Both focus on the desire to live in a big city due to previous bad experiences living elsewhere, yet, where “Brand New City” is bold and desperate, “In a Lake” is soft and forgiving. The backing music is a contributing factor to this, with Mitski opting for folk-inspired instrumentals, giving it a gentle acoustic Americana sound.
Personally, this song strikes me with nostalgia. Having decided to go to a college 550 miles away from home, the transition has been a little rough around the edges. Although the song doesn’t perfectly apply to my situation, considering my home in North Carolina isn’t a small town, the concept of starting over in a big city strikes me in the heart every time I hear the song. Accompanied by the country-folk instrumentals, I’m immediately transported to the mountains with each listen. To me, the song shares the necessary nature of change while subtly acknowledging the difficulty of it. It details the heaviness that comes before growth and the lightness that follows.
The rest of the album follows suit. Although some songs lean less into folky instrumentals, it still fits into the Americana genre overall. Some online critics tire of this “country” phase and want Mitski to move back into indie-rock-inspired music, such as Bury Me at Makeout Creek or Puberty 2. Personally, while some of my favorite songs come from her indie-rock albums, I heavily enjoy her folk-inspired pieces.
Another common opinion is that this album acts as a follow-up to Mitski’s previous album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. This, I agree with, for the most part. Some of the songs on Nothing’s About to Happen to Me are bolder than anything on The Land’s track. “Where’s My Phone?” in particular is uniquely high-energy, featuring an electric guitar, chaotic ending vocals, and even the bleeping of explicit words in an album that already has E-rated tracks.
The accompanying music video only amplifies this description. With camera movements that make the video feel like stop motion, insane close-ups, and the representation of Mitski’s past, future, and present all stuffed into one house, it’s artfully chaotic and surreal. It makes the central theme of the song, Mitski’s desire to protect both her younger and older selves, clearer. It deals with themes of fear, forgetfulness, and isolation. The music video for “Where’s My Phone?” also brings to light the subject of regretting past experiences with lovers, which is hinted at little, if at all, in the actual lyrics of the song.
The inclusion of lovers and regret as a core theme of the music video segues the album to the two following songs. “Cats” and “If I Leave” both detail romantic experiences and the singer’s inability to move on and let go of these relationships, even when it seems necessary. Filled with “maybe”s and “if”s, they’re some of the more obvious examples of the album being like liminal space, as if Mitski is stuck in place—passive as a transformation occurs around her.
“If I Leave” has a music video companion that can only be described as gothic horror. It moved me to tears and reminded me of Cesar A. Cruz’s quote, “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” The music video blatantly addresses the pain of mental illness in romantic relationships and contextualizes it with the consequence of death, leaving a heavy feeling after listening to it.
As a follow-up to the “If I Leave” music video, the next two songs on the album both deal with the concept of death. Although detailing separate, nuanced takes on the subject, the songs “Dead Women” and “Instead of Here” feel like two sides of the same coin. “Dead Woman” discusses the dehumanization of women and the romanticization of what women should be, using the analogy of death. It critiques the lack of agency that women are often given in their own stories.
“Instead of Here” dips back into the topic of mental illness and suicidal ideation. The song treats this mental issue as being in a place “where nobody can reach.” Death is personified as a woman in the song, and it’s presented in a way that the singer is stuck in a world between life and death, and has crossed into neither, once again touching on the idea of liminal space.
The remaining five songs on the album continue to develop on these core themes of death, relationships, change, and mental illness. “I’ll Change for You” and its music video, alongside “Rules,” elaborate on the desire to fit into boxes and abide by rules to appeal to a lover and the pain that comes with it. “Charon’s Obol” and “Lightning” both focus on morality and the reality that everyone will experience death.
Interestingly, “That White Cat,” while placed as the third-to-last track, feels like a response to the rest of the album. It presents a message that every being has a purpose, conveyed through the story of a white cat. Hinting back at the album cover, the song certainly feels like one of the most important tracks on the album. Additionally, it stands out from the majority of the album’s acoustic nature due to being backed by an electric guitar.
The themes of “In a Lake,” growth and positive change return, and there’s an aggressive sense of agency in “That White Cat.” It breaks away from the liminal space that the rest of the album is enveloped by. In a way, it feels like a rebuttal to the title, insisting that something will happen and that the singer will not be stuck forever. To me, it ties up the entire album and makes every song feel like a nuanced plea at these darker topics.
Mitski’s music is unique, bold, and moving, and this album is no exception. Everything about it feels like art. So if you haven’t already, I’d definitely give Nothing’s About to Happen to Me a listen, and live in that liminal space for a little while.