Mitski: Laurel Hell [DEAD OCEANS]

Why you'll love it

This Dead Oceans LP comes with a download card. Laurel Hell was the best-selling album in the US in its first week, Dead Oceans' first Billboard 200 top ten, and Mitski's highest-charting record in the US, UK, Ireland and Australia.

This edition

• Download card included
• Printed inner sleeve

About the album

The title comes from an old Appalachian folk term for getting trapped in the thickets of laurel that grow on the southern mountains, which is a fair description of how long this album took to find its shape. Mitski wrote most of the songs before and during 2018, tried them as a punk album and then as a country album, and finally finished them in lockdown as glittering, 1980s-tinged synth-pop.

Longtime producer Patrick Hyland gives it a sleek, orchestral sheen. "Valentine, Texas" opens quietly and blooms into a glam rock break, "Working for the Knife" puts a dream pop spin on late-80s industrial, and the second single, co-written with Dan Wilson, is a bright new wave tune that hides a heavy heart. "Love Me More" is pure disco urgency, "Heat Lightning" is an R&B slow jam about insomnia, and "Should've Been Me" turns baroque pop.

Consequence gave it a perfect score, and Metacritic logged universal acclaim. She described it as love songs about real relationships rather than power struggles, which is also roughly our policy on the staff picks wall.

Also at Kops: more Mitski on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Dead Oceans (cat# DOC250), the 2022 album.