Japanese Breakfast

From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it ​Jubilee​. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; ​Psychopomp​ was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while ​Soft Sounds From Another Planet​ took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.

How does she do it? With a joyful noise. From pulsing walls of synthgaze and piano on “Sit,” to the nostalgia-laden strings that float through “Tactics,” ​Jubilee bursts with the most wide-ranging arrangements of Zauner’s career. Each song unfurls a new aspect of her artistry: “Be Sweet,” co-written with Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum, is a jagged, propulsive piece of ‘80s pop that’s followed by a sweetly melancholic ballad in “Kokomo, IN.” As she rides a crest of saxophones and synthesizers through “Slide Tackle,” a piece of nimble pop-funk run through a New Order lens, Zauner professes her desire to move forward: “I want to be good—I want to navigate this hate in my heart somewhere better.”

In the years leading up to ​Jubilee​, Zauner also took theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time, in an effort to improve her range as a songwriter: “I’ve never wanted to rest on any laurels. I wanted to push it as far as it could go, inviting more people in and pushing myself as a composer, a producer, an arranger.” She pours that sentiment into the album from the very beginning, weaving a veritable tapestry of sound on the opening track “Paprika.” To build such an anthem of self-actualization, Zauner maxed out the technical limits of her recording rig, expelling her anxieties and egoism with layers upon layers of triumphant horns and marching snares. “How’s it feel to be at the center of magic? To linger in tones and words?” she ponders, conjuring the widescreen majesty of Kate Bush. “I opened the floodgates and found no water, no current, no river, no rush!”

Later, on “Savage Good Boy”—a kooky, terrifyingly prophetic jam co-produced with (Sandy) Alex G—Zauner reduces the excess of modern capitalism to an emotional level, sarcastically imagining the perspective of a billionaire trying to convince his lover to join him underground as the apocalypse unfolds. “I want to make the money until there’s no more to be made/And we will be so wealthy, I’m absolved from questioning/That all my bad behavior was just a necessary strain/They’re the stakes in a race to win.”

“I don’t want to weave politics into my music in a way that feels cheap, but I couldn’t make something that doesn’t comment on the reality we live in,” says Zauner. “I think that you need to push yourself to care, and that’s part of what this album is about: If you want change, in anything, you need to go to war for it.”

At the end comes “Posing for Cars,” one of the longest, most visceral Japanese Breakfast songs to date. In its muted opening, Zauner quietly re-embraces impassioned facets of youth—wistful daydreaming, fierce loyalty—atop a bed of slowly-strummed guitars. Those same feelings pour out of her fingertips as she erupts into a cathartic, nearly three-minute-long solo to close out the record, with gradual swells of distortion that evoke the arena-sized guitars of bands like Wilco or Sonic Youth.

Jubilee​ is an album about processing life and love in the quest for happiness, and how that process sometimes requires us to step outside of ourselves. “Savage Good Boy” isn’t the only time Zauner takes on a persona; On the cavernous masterpiece “Posing In Bondage,” she imagines a woman left behind in the confines of an empty house, traversing the blurred lines between domesticity and dominance as she sings to an absent lover. Meanwhile, “Kokomo, IN” was written from the perspective of a small-town Indiana boy, forced to say goodbye to a girlfriend who’s shipping off to study abroad. But throughout ​Jubilee,​ Zauner is hardly fictionalizing her lyrics, instead pouring her own life into the universe of each song to tell real stories, and allowing those universes, in turn, to fill in the details. Joy, change, evolution—these things take real time, and real effort. And Japanese Breakfast is here for it.

Past Shows


Jul
11
th
2022
First Avenue
Jul
11
th
2022
First Avenue

Japanese Breakfast

with The Linda Lindas
Sep
19
th
2021
First Avenue
Sep
19
th
2021
First Avenue

Japanese Breakfast

with Luna Li
Sep
18
th
2018
Fine Line
Sep
18
th
2018
Fine Line

Japanese Breakfast

with Ought
Jun
27
th
2017
7th St Entry
Jun
27
th
2017
7th St Entry

Alex G

with Japanese Breakfast and Cende
May
2
nd
2017
Palace Theatre
May
2
nd
2017
Palace Theatre

slowdive

with Japanese Breakfast
Sep
28
th
2016
7th St Entry
Sep
28
th
2016
7th St Entry

Porches

with Japanese Breakfast and Rivergazer
Jul
19
th
2016
7th St Entry
Jul
19
th
2016
7th St Entry

Mitski

with Japanese Breakfast and Jay Som

More Shows

May
30
th
7th St Entry

Nothing Buy Joy, glowingtide, Radiator Girl, and Orthe

Sep
15
th
Turf Club

Six Organs of Admittance

May
20
th
7th St Entry

Guitar Wolf

with Hans Condor
May
12
th
7th St Entry

Garcia Peoples

with P.G. Six