For an album so bound up in identity, the self is conspicuously absent from Mitski’s new work “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” released on Feb. 27. Instead of a personal “I,” listeners are introduced to 11 stories, told through distinct lenses. From the album’s official announcement on Feb. 27, Mitski’s creative process has been akin to that of an actor taking on a role: the finished project is a “narrative” album with a “reclusive” leading lady who inhabits an “unkempt house” and tells the stories of her neighbors.

This release marks Mitski’s eighth studio album and seventh collaboration with longtime creative partner, producer Patrick Hyland. Purportedly, it aims to continue the musical through line established in her previous two albums, 2023’s “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” and 2018’s “Be the Cowboy.” In “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” the songs “Cats” and “Instead of Here” trace this musical line most faithfully, bringing listeners back into a familiar dream-pop sound world of sighing synths, warm bass loops, and an intimate drum set-up.

The heart of “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” is its vivid storytelling. Mitski’s last display of such narrative ambition was in her 2012 debut album “Lush.” In “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” the reclusive muse in question takes on a host of identities characterized through different musical genres. In the absurdist and heady song “That White Cat,” Mitski is a supernatural, witch-esque figure, singing wailingly about her house’s local apex predator — the feline face of the album. Indeed, a hint of surrealism is evident even in the album’s visuals, from the cover’s medievally-inclined cat portrait by Mark Burckhardt to an antique maximalism in the album’s promotional video footage which toed the line between opulence and total chaos.

Beyond storytelling, loss of identity is a key thread in this work. Mitski subverts commonly held associations with different music genres, presenting listeners with an album of curated disorientation. “In a Lake” uses an accordion-dominated country sound as an ode to the urban pastoral: The narrator expresses a desire to start anonymously anew in a “big city.” The song eventually unravels into a cityscape outro of disparate sound effects. Mitski evokes similar discord in “I’ll Change for You,” contrasting the cool ease of a Latin bolero soundscape with a devastating portrait of infatuation: “I’ll do anything / For you to love me again / If you don’t like me now / I will change for you.”

In an uncharacteristic move for an artist so occupied with nostalgia and the past, Mitski roots lead single “Where’s My Phone” in the immediate now. The song is a sharp critique of technology’s role in plunging the human psyche into flailing dependency. Despite the suggestive question of the song title, the lyrics reveal that what she actually longs for is the clarity of the mental void: “I just want my mind to be a clear glass / Clear glass with nothing in my head.” Again, Mitski mirrors one’s fracturing of wants by setting the unravelling lyrics against a wall of unsettlingly modal, rock-driven musical catharsis.

What may strike listeners most, however, is just how dark some of the songs are. A shattering trifecta is formed by “Dead Women,” “Instead of Here,” and “Charon’s Obol,” three songs capturing a sense of near-existential terror so often tangled with womanhood. “Dead Women” asks, “Would you have liked me better if I’d died / So you could tell my story the way it ought to be,” forcing listeners to savor the bitter mouthfeel of art reflecting life a little too well.

A sung elegy, “Charon’s Obol” tells the story of the “girls who died in that house” —making the listener think of the “unkempt” abode from the album’s announcement. The girls’ ostracization seems to have been their death sentence, but the house’s latest inhabitant goes on fulfilling her role as “the token coin in its mouth.” Here, Mitski refers to the Greco-Roman tradition of placing an obol on the tongues of the dead to ensure their safe passage to the afterlife. This interpolation gives the song an ancient, yet familiar feeling.

And yet, it appears that passionate musical fervor is reserved for lighter experiential musings. For Mitski, the soundtrack to systemic violence is instrumental moderation and heartbreaking acceptance.

The construction of “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” as a gallery of unique musical windows looking onto different worlds is certainly a feat of total conceptual mastery. However, this appears to have precipitated a shuffle back from Mitski’s beloved, signature introspection; the album feels less compelling than some of her previous more soul-searching, soul-distilling work. Perhaps one can look towards her ongoing foray into musical theater for an explanation: The artist is currently composing the music and lyrics for an upcoming adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1983 chess thriller “The Queen’s Gambit.” While her previous albums have contained a selection of either poetry-heavy or composition-forward songs, the majority of this new album is an effortless melding of words and music, with one amplifying the other. At points, the scoring is decidedly epic — and even film-worthy — featuring jubilant brass fanfares in “Rules” and a boomy, going-on-a-quest sound in “Dead Women.”

If there was any lingering question as to the exceptionality of Mitski’s artistic fingerprint, this polished coin of an album sets it to rest. Against a backdrop of formulaic earworms dripping with selfhood, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” is an offering to and from long-form art and tales born from the collective.