#laurelhell

And I was right, but I just chose wrong

I start the day lying and end with the truth

That I'm dying for the knife

“Laurel Hell” as a Journey Through Self Reflection

by Ammi Lane-Volz, design by Hailey Lynaugh

“Who will I become tonight?” asks Mitski on her hiatus-breaking 2022 album, “Laurel Hell.” This question, found in the first verse of track one, establishes a theme for the following songs and the album as a whole. By looking at select tracks in order, “Laurel Hell” tells a story of self reflection and acceptance that the past can be looked upon with fondness. 

Her intention of self reflection is set up in the first song of the album, “Valentine, Texas.” The title itself acts as a callback to her previous body of work, as her first post-college album began with the similarly Texas-named song, “Texas Reznikoff.” In both songs, the energy after the first verse transforms completely in one beat and bombards the listener with imagery. However, instead of being explicitly about a relationship, as “Texas Reznikoff” was, her newer song focuses more on the protagonist’s self development. In the second verse, full of southwestern imagery reminiscent of that which underscored her fifth album, 2018’s “Be the Cowboy,” the protagonist takes listeners through a winding drive of figurative language. Dust devils– small and harmless cyclones in sunny deserts– are made by “dancing ghosts” kicking up “clouds of sand” which “look like mountains.” The ghosts can be seen as haunting memories– immaterial things still material enough to dredge up painful particulates. Yet while they are able to conjure objects that appear tangible and terrible to conquer, the mountain-like clouds are simply outlines of what they appear to be. The music shimmers away with the final line: “Let me watch those mountains from underneath/and maybe they’ll finally/float off of me.” All one can do to conquer them is not to reach their summit, but to do the opposite– examine them from a different perspective and wait for them to pass.

The next step in the protagonist’s self reflection journey is taken in the fourth song, “Everyone.” The sounds of this song are ominous, incessant; a foreboding march towards some foretold bad ending. Reflecting on the past, this song’s protagonist sees only pain and regret that was, in their eyes, their own fault. Out of spite or ignorance, the protagonist followed the path in life that “everyone” told them not to go down. And despite the dangers and uncertainty on this new path, they not only “left the door open” to the unknown, but also “opened [their] arms wide” to it, saying to “take it all.” In a foreboding voice, they repeat these lines: “I didn’t know what it would take.” This song could be viewed from a metatextual standpoint to be about Mitski’s own experience in the music industry from a young age. As some of her earlier songs, such as “But Dreaming Costs Money, My Dear,” saw the songwriter grappling with the low financial resources one often gets from being in music, there was likely some uncertainty around being able to survive in her chosen career. Furthermore, she has been involved in this industry for most of her young adult life, self-releasing two albums in the last two years of college, and staying active up until her recent 2018 hiatus. Particularly with her most recent album and the one that rocketed her to indie-superstardom, 2018’s “Be the Cowboy,” her time touring and working in this field shaved off bits of her soul and damaged her ability to have friendships. The title of the song “Everyone” seems to directly reference the newfound popularity she gained through “Be the Cowboy” by playing off the title of the ninth track, “Nobody.” However, while “Nobody” was a song about loneliness and yearning for human connection, with the intense popularity that Mitski gained from it, she now has even more (para)social connections than ever. But this still isn’t true human connection. Rather, she is a product for everyone’s consumption, someone who functions as a “black hole where people dump their feelings.” This feeling of not being able to be human prompted her hiatus from the music industry; however, because of contractual obligations, and because she loves performing, she is still trapped. The song closes out with the lines: “Sometimes I think I am free/ Until I find I’m back in line again.”  

As a standalone song, “Everyone” can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the experience of some childhood trauma survivors. This song communicates a corruption of nostalgia. Calls of the childhood game hide-and-seek are warped to communicate danger. Some unspecified thing– innocence, the ability to be vulnerable– was taken from the exploited protagonist during their youth, far more than what they could handle giving. What should have been a pleasant memory of the past and its vulnerability is flooded with bitterness and regret. And despite being the exploited party, comparing themselves to a “babe in a crib/after some big hand turns out the lights,” they still blame themselves for choosing the path that would bring them closest to danger. This victim blaming mentality that often comes from external sources, especially for survivors of sexual abuse, has become internalized for the protagonist. 

The next two songs that continue the theme of self reflection are track seven, “Love Me More,” and track eight, “There’s Nothing Left Here For You.” The sounds of the former song are a completely different tempo and feel than “Everyone,” and more closely reflect the danceable mood of some of the other less explicitly self-reflective songs on the album. This is fitting to the theme of the song, as it is about using love as a distraction from internal struggles. High tempo masks the moodiness and compliments the vague distractedness of lyrics like “I wish that this would go away” and “I need you to love me…enough to drown it out.” The lyrics mention an unspecified mistake that the protagonist has been continually making for 15 years; a mistake that has been caused by their desire to not stay “at home.” By staying at home, whether that be a physical place, the stability of a singular relationship, or one’s own body (i.e. having internal validation), they hope to reinvent themselves. But despite whatever they “should” be doing, they still need external validation and love to “fill”, “drown out”, and “clean up” the protagonist. This implies that without this external validation, they are empty, too loud, and dirty. The protagonist seeks to avoid this supposed reality. 

But, just like a passing cloud, this avoidance through love cannot last forever. The sounds of “There’s Nothing Left Here For You” are an aftermath– low and droning, almost ambient. The protagonist’s single reason for being is no longer there, whether that be the creation of a career, fulfillment of a goal, or the external validation supplied by an audience. Mitski herself wrote this song just after she played what she announced to be her last show indefinitely. Yet they must decide what to do from here. Reflecting back on their experience, the song’s sounds shift gears, filled with hope and the ecstatic energy of achieving what they devoted their life to, and just as suddenly, it disappears. However, the protagonist is now able to devote their love and attention to other things, like their personal relationships and relationship with themselves. 

The penultimate song, “I Guess,” is a song about reluctant acceptance of an ending. The protagonist is almost at a point of acceptance, but the slow tempo indicates mourning. 

However, a step further from “There’s Nothing Left Here For You,” the protagonist has reached a point of gratitude. While reluctant to move into a new unknown, they are thankful for the self reflection that this ending has brought about. They believe they will be able to learn how to live without “you”-- whether that be a lover or the music industry. This sentiment rings of another expressed in the song “Brand New City” from her very first album. In the song, the protagonist feels that their life and body are deteriorating, and that they need to completely reinvent themselves. If they “gave up on being pretty” (i.e. were no longer consumable and pristine, and they allowed themselves to be vulnerable), they “wouldn’t know how to be alive.” The speaker in this song then comes to the conclusion that they should move somewhere where no one knows them and “teach [themselves] how to die.” “I Guess” contains similar lyrics: “Without you, I don’t yet know quite how to live.” However, this sentiment is much less fatalistic. There is still hope contained within this line that they will learn how to live– they do not need to teach themselves to die.