Mitski - Puberty 2

Ask Mitski Miyawaki about happiness and she'll warn you: “Happiness fucks you.” It's a lesson that's been writ large into her gritty, outsider songwriting for years, but never so powerfully as on her 2016 album, Puberty 2.

“Happiness is up, sadness is down, but one's almost more destructive than the other,” she says. “When you realize you can't have one without the other, it's possible to spend periods of happiness just waiting for that other wave.” On Puberty 2, that tension is palpable: a beautiful and brutal romantic hinterland, in which one of modern music’s defining voices came fully into focus.