Puberty 2 arrived in 2016 as a gut-wrenching self-portrait of raw angst, confusion, and adolescence. “I Bet on Losing Dogs” is pitifully honest, “Your best American Girl” is painfully longing, and then there are the viscerally pressurized tracks like “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars,” for when the only thing that makes sense is strumming a D-major power-chord as hard as you fucking can.
The new material strikes a “balance in unevenness,” as Mitski told The FADER in her 2016 Gen F interview. You can see that balance in the new covers, as well as her January single “Where’s My Phone?” from her February album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, which The FADER’s associate editor Tobias Hess characterized as a more straight-forward rock song in the vein of Puberty 2; read his full track review here.
