Mitski: Laurel Hell review – a deep dive you can dance to

(Dead Oceans)
The indie artist delivers devastating emotional truths and unsettling imagery – with sharp hooks and an 80s pop sheen

Made up in equal parts of emotional pop bangers and riveting electronic anomie, Mitski’s hotly anticipated fifth album does not disappoint. This Japanese American indie artist’s strides towards the mainstream are laced with resonant themes; disembodied hands, cleanliness and “the dark” recur as images.

The hooks are sharp. A series of tunes skew hard towards sleek, oversaturated 80s pop. In addition to the maximalist cris de coeur The Only Heartbreaker and Love Me More – both previously released – Mitski packs in bouncy romps such as Should’ve Been Me, outlining the pitfalls of a relationship with deceptive orchestral cheer. The dulcet Americana of Heat Lightning could sit easily alongside the notionally more commercial work of Lana Del Rey.

Related: Mitski, the US’s best young songwriter: ‘I’m a black hole where people dump their feelings’

And yet the mesmerising album opener – Valentine, Texas – and its devastating midpoint – Everyone – cast Mitski as an altogether more frightening artist, a fierce being with “wet teeth”, one who ill-advisedly invites in “the dark” to take “whatever it wants”. “But it didn’t want me/ Yet,” she notes, a phrase pregnant with unresolved tension and dissonant musicality. This is an album that wrestles with the sisyphean slog of remaining engaged – with love, with work, with life. And you can dance to it.