In April 2021, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner will publish her first book, a memoir titled “Crying in H Mart”. If the titular essay, originally published in a 2018 issue of The New Yorker, is any indication, it will be a moving depiction of Zauner’s relationship with her family, food, and Korean heritage. Zauner will also share a new Japanese Breakfast album, a much-anticipated follow-up to 2017’s “Soft Sounds From Another Planet”. In the meantime, check out pop songs 2020, an EP Zauner made with Crying’s Ryan Galloway under the name Bumper.
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.
Michlle Zauner has been making waves in the indie music scene for a year now with her alter ego Japanese Breakfast but she’s not quite there yet in the first row of indie pop superstars (you know, the Tame Impala/ Phoebe Bridgers level). But now she returns with her entry ticket and what might easily the best pop song of 2021 so far. Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing helped her writing it and I told you before that this man is an expert when it comes to catchy 80s-infected pop hooks. “Be Sweet” is such a song – a much needed overdose of positive vibes, including a chorus that will stuck in your damn head for the rest of the day, week and maybe year. “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy,” Zauner says about her forthcoming record “Jubilee” which is out in June and will be a ‘bombastic’ experience according to her.
“Posing in Bondage” the new song by Japanese Breakfast from the album ‘Jubilee’, out June 4th on Dead Oceans.
‘Jubilee’ finds Michelle Zauner embracing ambition and, with it, her boldest ideas and songs yet. Inspired by records like Bjork’s ‘Homogenic’, Zauner delivers bigness throughout – big ideas, big textures, colours, sounds and feelings. At a time when virtually everything feels extreme, ‘Jubilee’ sets its sights on maximal joy, imagination, and exhilaration. It is, in Michelle Zauner’s words, “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation… The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honouring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”
Throughout ‘Jubilee’, Zauner pours 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.
Writing a profound pop song is an art form – and this is a great example for it.
The Fat Angel Sings 