“Happiness fucks you. Once it's in your hands, you try to hold onto it, but the nature of happiness is that it passes through and eventually leaves.” Puberty 2 is the fourth studio album from Mitski Miyawaki, and her first for Dead Oceans; co-produced by longtime collaborator Patrick Hyland. Over the course of the album’s 11 tracks Mitski muses on love, loss and her place in the world as a Japanese-born American woman, all filtered through her singular biting tone: “Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me” (“Your Best American Girl”).

• cassette version
• full color J-card insert
  
• music label: Dead Oceans 2018

reviewed by Ed 209 12/2018