New Music Reviews: Mitski, Hemlocke Springs, L.A. Mitchell

Three female solo artists this week. Mitski and Hemlocke Springs deliver conceptual albums, while L.A. Mitchell is back with her first solo album in decades.

Mitski

Nothing’s About To Happen To Me

2026, 7.5/10
On 27 August 2018, Mitski released the superlative Be The Cowboy. I don’t know if anyone’s made a better album since 2018, including Mitski. She’s continued to be interesting, but hasn’t returned to that record’s restless alchemy. On Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, she returns to the sound of The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, again working with producer Patrick Hyland and the same band. It’s immediately notable for its preoccupation with cats – they feature on the cover, and in two song titles.

The character I had in mind for this album concept is a reclusive, weird woman living alone in an old house that she inherited but can’t manage. I wanted to explore a house as a person’s mind and all the stuff accumulating in an old house, like the various generational traumas that might accumulate in a person’s mind.

The cat feels right for this character, for this general feeling of the album. 

Mitski, The Current (oral interview edited for clarity)

On the low-key, countrified opener ‘In A Lake’, Mitski sings about not wanting to live in a small town: “Where you never get away from your first love/It’s like one brand of soap’s sold in town.” ‘Dead Women’ never raises about a whisper until the final half minute, but it’s foreboding. On the lounge-flavoured ‘I’ll Change For You’, she’s gently beguiling.

However, it feels uneven – ‘That White Cat’ lacks the subtlety that distinguishes most of the record.

Mitski is fabulous, but she’s yet to make another record that touches the quality of Be The Cowboy.

---

Hemlocke Springs

The Apple Tree Under the Sea

2026, 7.5/10
Isimeme “Naomi” Udu was a postgraduate medical student at Dartmouth when her song ‘Girlfriend’ went viral. Four years later, The Apple Tree Under The Sea is her debut long player. It’s a concept album about self-discovery. The press releases says that it “requires her to confront the chaos and repression of her past in order to claim the full, liberatory life she once didn’t even know was possible”.

Kate Bush. Love, love her, love her, love her, love her. What can be said other than that? Kate Bush and Tears for Fears. I know Songs From the Big Chair is their big album, but I did listen to that album a lot. And a little bit of Enya. A smidge of Enya. I want to be like her because she’s in a castle.

Hemlocke Springs, interview with Chappell Road in Nylon

It starts hyperactive and theatrical – ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Ankles’ sounds like a particularly hyperactive and irritating Sparks song. But it’s much stronger when it calms down a little – ‘Sever the Blight’ is a mid-album highlight, while ‘Be The Girl!’ is a suitably epic closer.

Hemlocke Springs is an in-your-face, polarising artist. But The Apple Tree Under The Sea is the work of someone talented and ambitious.

---

L.A. Mitchell

Meaningful Work

2026, 8/10
Christchurch’s L.A. Mitchell works as a vocal tutor at Canterbury University. She’s made a lot of music in different guises – with Fly My Pretties and as part of the married duo Terrible Sons. But Meaningful Work is only her second studio album, a long-awaited follow-up to 2007’s Debut. Mitchell has been working on these songs for over a decade, interrupted by motherhood

I’ve been reading this book, This Is What It Sounds Like, by Susan Rogers, And What The Music You Love Says About You …. This realisation in that moment I’m not even making music I like.

L.A. Mitchell, Radio New Zealand

On her recent Radio New Zealand interview, Mitchell talks about different influences. But Meaningful Work reminds me of Vanessa Carlton’s recent work – a piano-based, earnest singer-songwriter deconstructing her sound in the studio.

Sometimes she’s still stripped back and heartfelt, like on ‘Better’. But other times, like on ‘Slow Dancing’ and ‘Red on Red’, she lets the groove take centre-stage, delivering authoritative vocal performances.

I feel a certain kinship with Mitchell. She’s approximately 28 times more talented than me. But we’re about the same age, and she lives in the NZ region where much of my family originates. Meaningful Work is a welcome return.

Read More

• 2026 albums on my to-do list
• New music reviews