Photo by Lexie Alley
Mitski crashes to earth on “Where's My Phone?”, the lead single off her forthcoming album, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me (out February 27 via Dead Oceans).
The song is tea-pot whistle, roaring open with a wall of fuzz and Mitski thrusting us into her confused spiral: “Where did it go? / Where’s my phone? / Where did I leave? / Where’d I go?” she sings.
The song's music video, set in a Grey Gardens,-esque old manor, shows Mitski cooped up with her sister and an elder female family member while pesky neighbors torment them. Its quickened cuts and fish-eye cinematography mirrors the song’s strong sense of psychodrama.
Both the song and video speak to a feeling of paranoia, and, per its title, can be thought of in terms of the diminishing effects of phone usage. “I just want my mind to be a clear glass/Clear glass with nothing in my head,” she sings on the song’s quickened verse.
The song and forthcoming album were made using the same process as 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We — both recorded using a live band and chamber ensemble arrangements.
Though the new single has a similar sense of loud granduer as The Land, its sonics are comparatively bare-bones. Most of The Land sounds like it slowly descended from a cloudy stratosphere while "Where's My Phone?" feels like it emerged from the rocky soil, brash and unvarnished.
The new single is likely to compel listeners to think of earlier-era Mitski. There are strong reminders of 2014’s Bury Me At Makeout Creek or her breakout album, 2016’s Puberty 2.
Like both projects, “Where’s My Phone?” finds the often compositionally shifty singer and songwriter foregoing roundabout musical journeys for a clean straight shot. This song is condensed and thunders ahead at full speed the entire time.
Album Art for "Nothing’s About to Happen to Me" by Marc Burkhardt
"Where's My Phone?" is also more straight forward genre-wise. Mitski dabbled with synth electronics on Laurel Hell and Be the Cowboy, which also had a twangy country palette. Here, though, Mitksi takes us firmly back to good old Rock and Roll. It's a genre that particularly suits her uniquely visceral lyricism and heightened emotional range.
“Where’s My Phone?” has an air of theatricality that should excite fans who often use Mitski’s musical dramaturgy to process their own inner turmoil. (For better or worse, Mitski’s fandom is one of the most prone to posting videos of themselves sobbing to her music on TikTok).
And while there is a lot of sorrow in the song, there is also humor and rage here, too — as is always the case with Mitski's music. This time, though, you get to bang your head a little.
