These past few years, it’s seemed like Mitski could disappear at any time. Given that her breakthrough album, Puberty 2, established her creative voice as enthralling but elusive, almost otherworldly in its abstract intensity, the vague danger that she might spectrally fade away was weirdly appropriate. As Mitski rose in prominence, her misgivings manifested in a variety of ways, including certain reticence present on her 2022 album, Laurel Hell. It feels significant, then, that the announcement of her latest full-length, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, was accompanied by the assurance that she was committed to continuing to craft music for the masses after tidying up some contractual concerns with her record label. Our best American girl is evidently here to stay.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We tells its own story about Mitski’s revived level of engagement. She works with her regular producer, Patrick Hyland, and the continuity of their working relationship holds the material together like the metal bands around a barrel. The notable addition to their cohort is Drew Erickson, who Mitski sought out for orchestrations after admiring his work with Father John Misty and others. The new collaborator allow Mitski to strip back her songwriting, content in the knowledge that they will build up each track with choral and orchestral elements. The cuts on the album are as lean as Mitski’s earliest, most intricate and delicate work, and yet they all comes across as vistas shadowed by churning meteorological threat.

Lead single and album opener “Bug Like an Angel” is emblematic of the approach. It switches from stark to luxuriant with eye-blink efficiency, which simultaneously mirrors and accentuates the complexity of the stunning complexity and daring of the lyrics (“When I’m bent over wishin’ it was over/ Makin’ all variety of vows I’ll never keep/ I try to remember the wrath of the devil/ Was also given him by God”). The approach is arguably even more disconcertingly effective on “I Don’t Like My Mind,” which couples intensely elegant music with words that relay the tragicomic situation of responding to personal dismay by stress-eating cake to the point of physical rejection: “So, yeah, I blast music loud, and I work myself to the bone/ And on an inconvenient Christmas, I eat a cake/ A whole cake, all for me.” At the album’s most deliriously inventive, it’s as if Mitski is making up entirely new rules for how pop music works and bring them forth with the placid face of the imperiously confident.

If the previously mentioned tracks are the discernible peaks of the album, the whole mountain range stretches impressively high to the sky. “Heaven” has an orchestral sweep that can raise goosebumps, and “Star” is so gorgeous that it’s the aural equivalent of softly rippling stain. “My Love Mine All Mine” is Mitski in full chanteuse mode, and “The Deal” is a spiritual descendent of Mazzy Star at their most ravishing. “I’m Your Man” arrives late in the track list, its acoustic, echoing form adding heat to the already scalding lyrics: “You’re an angel, I’m a dog/ Or you’re a dog and I’m your man/ You believe me like a God/ I destroy you like I am.” In every respect, Mitski doesn’t let up.

Because Mitski herself has asserted a fortified sense of purpose, there a mighty temptation to think of The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We as a new beginning. That strikes me as a woefully incorrect assessment. The new album doesn’t need to carry any extra narrative. It’s simply one more step in an impressive artistic journey that we’re all privileged to hear, see, and feel.