“Let’s step carefully into the dark…I’ll show you who my sweetheart never met.” With those opening lines, the new Mitski album begins like a shimmery, discordant rock opera. And in this story, love is the main character that sticks you into memories like a molasses-floored nightmare. In Laurel Hell, the ending isn’t necessarily as important as questioning what it all meant, how much it all mattered, and who you are now.

Crystalized moments are reexamined to pinpoint those questions and try to find answers, but the reflection is multifaceted. This love – maybe for a person, maybe for a project – is always malleable, but never pleasant.

In “Heat Lightning” the description of an incoming storm is an analogy for the relationship, “there’s nothing [she] can do, not much [she] can change” so she just surrenders to the elements. In “Love Me More” the driving synth and fierce piano solo highlight the loneliness of hoping that someone or something will “love enough to fill me up” while wondering how everyone else can just keep going day after day after day after day. By “The Only Heartbreaker” the love has gone stale and it’s no one’s fault, but someone always has to end it and be the villain so she’ll “be the bad guy in the play.”

The recent death of Meat Loaf brought me back to listening to his music and the drama that was evoked over simple things. A friend of mine shared a video when the news broke. In it, Meat Loaf said he was dramatic, not theatrical, and that he wanted to build a frenzy of energy to share with the audience. I was reminded of that frenzy building and that drama while listening to Laurel Hell. There’s such beauty in Mitski’s description of the dreary, banality of life. Her turn of phrase is a shiv to the stomach in songs like “Stay Soft” and the line, “open up your heart like the gates of hell.” Love is dark place, but it has such beautiful moments in Mitski’s world.

After all the ups and downs and questions and contemplations of love and how it works, there’s the quiet reckoning of “I Guess,” with a light and airy ending refrain of “from here I can say thank you.” But, in true rock opera fashion, that quiet and humble catharsis isn’t the end – the curtain closer “That’s Our Lamp” brings disco energy, with big horns and even an audience sing along with a retelling of the fight that broke everything to bits. Laurel Hell is high on drama, and brings a frenzy of emotions, but crafted by Mitski’s delicate hand, love is the sort of hell I wouldn’t mind revisiting.