Pop Break Live:’Nothing’s About to Happen to Me’ in the Tansy House at The Shed in New York City
Following the release of Nothings About to Happen to Me Mitski has begun touring internationally. The Shed in New York is among the quirky venues she has chosen, and tickets include access to an art installation based on the album.
My first introduction to Mitski was through a reposted TikTok which used “Strawberry Blond” off of Retired from Sad, New Career in Business. The song captured the theme of otherness I saw in my relationships whether they be romantic or platonic as the narrator longs for a life in the shape of her strawberry blonde lover, the epithet relates nature to purity and whiteness.
Feeling seen by Mitski’s yearning, I listened to the rest of Retired from Sad, New Career in Business. The record explores disillusionment with American culture, especially its conventions of romance.
Mitski is often reduced to “sad girl” music, featuring heavily on various melancholic Spotify playlists. Rather than a critique I see this as a strength of both Mitski and myself, we understand sadness deeply and aim to communicate every facet of our sadness through art. It’s much more difficult to find the nuances in one emotion than to write about many.
Before the show, ticket holders at The Shed enjoyed a small interactive installation. Attendees were able to walk through a staged house which echoed the themes of isolation and abandonment in Nothings About to Happen to Me. The tracklist of the show itself contained three songs which relate isolation and abandonment to setting: “If I Leave,” “Dead Woman,” and, “Instead of Here.”
The house is a physical manifestation of Mitski’s psyche. The state of disarray, and abandonment of the home can be interpreted in many different ways which exist simultaneously according to the particular aspect of isolation that Mitski hones in on in a song.
“If I Leave” involves imagining someone moving on from the narrator. This feeling is externalized into throwing sheets over couches, and a layer of dust over their love when Mitski is forgotten. When she leaves that relationship dies. On the other hand, in “Instead of
Here” and “Dead Woman” Mitski is the one who is dead and haunts the house which represents her life.
Alongside performing Nothings About to Happen to Me, Mitski performed other songs in her discography which she felt to be thematically fitting. The inspirations and allusions to other albums were also seen in the exhibit. High heels on the bed referencing “Bag of Bones” and books of Greek myths which inspire songs like “Carry Me Out.”
Along with smoke machines and colorful lights each song had accompanying footage projected behind the stage. The videos acted as a visualizer and added new meanings to the tracks in real time. When performing “Where’s my Phone?” clips from I Love Lucy played, strange because a dependence on phones is not associated with the 1950s. Generally, Mitski often draws from 1950s Americana imagery, this is the idea of America that immigrant parents were sold, and that children of immigrants grew up with. Therefore seeing I Love Lucy brought a sense of nostalgia and comfort which clashes with the roughness of the production. That juxtaposition is an encapsulation of the experience of slowly coming to realize the horrors of the modern American reality while still trying to work towards your promised dreams.
Mitski also performed “Two Slow Dancers” which uses high school imagery to depict a dying relationship. The couple is trying to rekindle a sense of romance that they previously shared in their youth but failing to attain it. “Two Slow Dancers” is a fear born from growing up in a home where your parents are stuck in an unfulfilling relationship. And the sense of nostalgia I felt watching the clips of Old Hollywood women falling in and out of love is the same feeling as going through a photo album, showing a version of my parents that died out with time.
Death is a throughline in all her works and whether or not to succumb to it is a question Mitski asks herself again and again. In “Two Slow Dancers” it’s the death of a relationship, but in other tracks it is the death of a dream (“Class of 2013”).
The show ended with “Pearl Diver,” an obscure choice from Lush; themes of desire, humanity and ambition perhaps representing Mitski losing herself to her dreams of fame. Mitski’s discography as a whole is an evolution of her relationship with sadness; she needs to continue feeling it to write more. The pearl diver is restless and hungry for success, which mirrors how Mitski’s infatuation with despair fuels her songwriting in a never ending cycle.
Ending on this note felt incredibly fulfilling since it was a pick off her first album. “Pearl Diver” was the perfect conclusion to a night where we could all be sad together. In between songs Mitski said she would need to do hours and hours of therapy everyday to be okay. Instead she chooses to perform and she is grateful that we let her do therapy at us.
