Mitski - Puberty 2 (10th Anniversary) [Green]

Mitski's Puberty 2 gets a green vinyl anniversary reissue, revisiting the record that moved her from cult favourite to one of indie rock's essential voices.

Released in 2016, her fourth album and first for Dead Oceans was recorded in about two weeks at Acme Studios in Westchester, New York, with longtime collaborator Patrick Hyland producing. It wrestles with longing, depression, alienation and racial identity, and does it with an emotional precision critics fell hard for.

Your Best American Girl is the centrepiece, a quiet confession that erupts into a wall of distorted guitar, about loving someone whose world may never fully accept you. Happy opens the album on a lurching beat and a sudden blast of saxophone, I Bet On Losing Dogs aches with slow-burning resignation, and A Burning Hill closes on a hushed, acoustic note.

The arrangements swing between bedroom-quiet and blown-out fuzz, sometimes inside a single verse, and her voice holds steady at the centre of every storm. Nothing is wasted, and most songs make their point in well under four minutes.

Ten years on it still sounds raw and brave, and the anniversary pressing gives longtime fans a fresh copy of an album many of them wore out the first time.