Review: Mitski — Nothing’s About to Happen to Me

Mitski
Nothing’s About to Happen to Me
Dead Oceans
Street: 02.28.2026
Mitski = Ronnie Specter + Weyes Blood + Lana Del Rey

On her latest album Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, Mitski removes the veil that hides the lonely, lost and isolated souls that drift wall-to-wall in their own homes, like ghosts: room-to-room, intentional, aimless and alone. Mitski mixes her beautiful, airy voice in a syrupy malaise of heartache, honky tonk and art pop singing about lightning, dogs of dead girls, cats and lost things. Mitski puts it all together with a smooth Burt Bacharach-like production of horns and strings, with fuzz guitar and bubblegum rock mixed with the existential dread of Lana Del Rey. On her eighth studio album, Mitski is a candle trying to stay lit in the middle of an ice storm.

“Would you like me better if I’d died / So you could tell my story the way it ought to be,” Mitski sings on the sad waltz “Dead Women,” a song about suicide ideation and what’s left behind. “You’d find my parents and ask to see my things / Rifle through it all, fill the blanks with what you need.” Mitski ends the track in a fever dream of her own funeral. “Then embalm me up ’cause you’re hosting the viewing / Saying, ‘She gave her life so we could love her in our dreams’  / ‘She gave her life so we could fuck her as we please.’”

Mitski uses the theme of inner self and outside fears on the opener “In A Lake” — “I’d never live in a small town / I’ve made too many mistakes.” Mitski sings, “For where you gotta write your book early / Or it gets written up in your place.” Mitski swims through the chorus: “But in a lake, you can backstroke forever / The Sky before you, the dark right behind / And in a big city, you can start over.” Mitski knows of all the places to be all alone, when being alone is a choice to make. “Right as I dip a toe in the abyss.” Mitski muses on the track “Instead Of Here,” “A knock on the door / Saying, ‘Are you in their miss?’ / I stay as quiet as I can.”

Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Hell is other people.” On Nothing’s About to Happen To Me, Mitski is not opening that door to a single soul. She has retreated into a neurotic womb of her own making in a haunted house where Mitski is the only active ghost haunting. Every song is a bleak, surrealistic one-act play about death, delusion, detachment and the absurdity of doing nothing about it.

Mitski is recently sober, but there is a last call vibe to this record. All drinkers reach a time in their drinking lives where they realize the party is over. It’s usually at closing time. “Bars, such magical places / You can be with other people / Without having anyone at all, but now,” Mitski croons on “I’ll Change For You” over a basa nova lounge swing. “They say they’re closing / So I’m loitering outside / Watching all the cars passing by / Like a kid waiting for my ride” — a ride that isn’t coming.

Nothing’s About to Happen to Me is Mitski’s most intimate album to date. It packs a punch in a quiet and gorgeous way. “If I mourn, all the better,” Mitski proclaims on the closing track, “Lightning.” “To behold the sunrise / I can hear the song of my death / Singing for the lightning to come / Calling to the thunder, ‘Polo’” — Mitski announces she’s still around. 

This album is the color of storm clouds at sunset; it’s high tide before the ocean pulls back. It’s the best album (so far) of 2026. Buy this album. Buy a glass of wine to tap down the nausea of day-to-day living, lock yourself up alone in the safe place of your home and let this album crush you with its dark and haunting weight. —Russ Holsten

Read more album reviews by Russ Holsten:
Review: Dry Cleaning — Secret Love
Review: Melody’s Echo Chamber — Unclouded