Music Review: Japanese Breakfast’s “Soft Sounds From Another Planet”
After her 2016 studio debut under the Japanese Breakfast alias, “Psychopomp’’, Michelle Zauner’s latest album, “Soft Sounds From Another Planet” cements her as one of the leaders of contemporary indie-pop. Zauner decides to take a slight detour from the lavish city-pop and takes you beyond the stratosphere — a fluttering Roland-Juno 6, ambient vocal performances, and a dominant bass track-by-track. Where Zauner would have brought every instrument to the fore for an optimistic 2–3 minute track, she suspends thematic elements in the background to let the imaginative soundscape surround the listener. Moreover, she keeps her honest writing everything that made Japanese Breakfast successful aboard the sonic shuttle.
Zauner doubles down on the confrontational attitudes sprouting in “Psychopomp” and takes them even further with her vocal performance in this 12-track project. She grapples with ambition within the relationship space, self-confidence, and her identity. In her most focused project yet, Zauner isn’t settling for mediocrity. She is focused on being exactly who she knows she is.
She introduces herself with pride in “Diving Woman”: “I wanna be a woman of regimen / A bride in her home state / A diving woman of Jeju-do / I want it all”. The track runs a confident 6 minutes long with a single bass-drum loop. Despite being simple, the track hardly feels like 6 minutes at all, a result of each bar being performed after its preceding bar rings for a few seconds. In the latter half of the song, the instrumental continues with slight improvisations coming from the percussion or the low-gain guitar. Lyrically, Zauner credits the track to the diving women of Jeju, her South Korean home island, for being able to dive beneath extreme depths of water to make a living selling fish. She tells Genius in an interview: “I really admire the haenyeo [diving woman] — that lifestyle, of regimen and endurance, was inspiring to me, particularly during a time when I was touring a lot. I think this song is also partially about feeling guilty about being a touring woman, and the fear that people were judging me for putting my career above having a family.” Zauner displays a gendered double standard of effort and she continues to fulfill her duty honestly.
As Japanese Breakfast provides a solo space for Zauner, “Road Head” paints a picture of ambition met with skepticism and disbelief. She sought to capture “that really ugly moment when you try to do something sexually wild to save a relationship, only to make it more painfully apparent that it’s not going to work”, she told NPR. Zauner begins with a witty guitar riff that follows an open, airy bass arrangement that allows a picture to be painted without many distractions from the track itself. Zauner imagines a relationship in which road head is a risky move that could either make or break a relationship: “You gave road head on a turnpike exit / Going home, going home / Last ditch desperate, like a makeshift siphon / Pump and run”. This track embodies the sentiment of the project itself as Zauner makes herself emotionally bare in an effort to be understood as a dedicated artist. But Zauner resolves that even if she isn’t taken seriously, she will stay on her track alone, if she has to: “‘Dream on, baby,’ were his last words to me / ‘Dream on, baby’ / So dreaming baby took that corkscrew highway”.
“Machinist” marks the exoplanetary focus of the album clear. As the album’s literal machinist, Zauner’s vocals are affected by a vocoder, introducing a love affair between a human and a robot. Intimate questions fill the bridge: “Do you trust me? / Can you feel it?” The conundrum leads Zauner to pining for the love of the robot, hence, leading her to become animated herself across the chorus. Retro as the effect may be, Zauner’s raw vocal performance suffers a bit for the thematic benefit. This track marks the point where Zauner is aesthetically beyond the world’s conventions and within a safe-space for this experimentation. An alto saxophone accompanies this arrival, appearing as the ideal support for a climactic ending to a modern love struggle. “Planetary Ambience” takes inventory of the scenic landscape during its 1-minute duration: turning, prismatic bells, sparse guitar notes, and a quick swelling of synthesizers.
The new space allows “Soft Sounds from Another Planet” to generate a new meaning for the archetypal breakup song. Where the modern pop song may feature a bouncy chorus with an attitude that doesn’t desire the ex at all, Zauner wishes the best for a past partner who allowed past attitudes to affect the present. Their present. She accounts for this condition and defines it: “I wish I could keep you from abusing / Yourself for no reason at all / Counting backwards, things you endured / Pitting them up against happier lives”. Taking a nod from the country genre, this song features a reminiscent lap steel solo to usher in her resilient final verse. The space-cowboy trope lives on through this track and it works to Zauner’s benefit; she is spatially beyond the unbearable hurt.
Zauner demonstrates her strength as a vocalist on “Boyish”, continuing onward with its previous track’s energy. The two play on each other well to paint a picture of her trying efforts as a woman to make things work when they are out of her control. She can’t control her partner’s ‘boy-ish’ reassurance and patterns. She can’t control how much she truly loves this person either, she describes herself as a loser alongside her partner: “I can’t get you off my mind, I can’t get you off in general / So here we are, we’re just two losers / I want you and you want something more beautiful” Backing vocals and a strong bass performance, decorated with a rattling tambourine, elevate this track from inadequate to exceptional. This is my favorite track on the project for the grand-production and dramatics behind Zauner’s assertive, perceptive take on a trying romance.
Ushering in the latter end of the album, “12 Steps” reverts to the previous sound of Japanese Breakfast from 2016. There isn’t a strong presence of the otherworldly aesthetic on the track but instead, Zauner provides a shorter arc of a lover who finds themselves in love with a third party. She contemplates how she continued with her previous partner for their time but resolves: “It’s easy to leave, it’s easy to leave”. Unfortunately, the cumulative momentum for the imaginative soundscape of the project comes to a halt on this track. It’s fun and the riffs are rich in post-pop elements but its aesthetic motifs are a bit confused in its place on the album. “Jimmy Fallon Big!” succeeds in focusing on the project once again with Zauner’s daring vocals and illustrious synths following behind her. Despite falling under 3-minutes, the track successfully stretches its listener with Zauner’s vocals and repetitive guitar across its single verse and contemplates an empty space in her life once occupied by someone she appreciates: “We aren’t bound by anything at all / Just you / If you decide to show / Just if you decide to show up on time” There isn’t much room, in this track nor in this project, to care for someone who isn’t going to show up on time.
The fluttering effects of the Juno 6 and themes of estrangement and perseverance separate “The Body Is a Blade” from “12 Steps”, despite both tracks featuring strong guitars and a climactic chorus. Not only is this a strong display of Zauner’s songwriting and vocal performance, but the percussive section excels in creating a space where Zauner can float lyrically across the chorus. Following shortly after her dance above the drums, the synthesizer dances, itself, along the tone ladder. As beautiful as the song sounds altogether, Zauner focuses on dissociating and persevering against motivations that do not serve you: “Try your best to slowly withdraw / From the darkest impulses of your heart / Try you best to feel and receive / Your body is a blade that cuts a path from / Day to day” All that matters to Zauner is moving forward, considering every trauma and pain explored on the project.
“Till Death” pays homage to a partner who truly supports you despite every outstanding condition that encourages them not to. This is the most complete song on the album, featuring: large tubular bells, a decisive bass, stylistically tactful cymbals, and an excellent brass section. As explored in “Boyish”, Zauner finds assurance in this partner and spends the nearly 4-minute duration of the track reflecting on how wonderful that fact is, seriously considering her own flaws as a partner: “Steering on hostile waves of panic / Like fighting a wheel that pulls to the right / I don’t deserve you but I’m giving it my best / Extol your sacrifice with fine caviars and aspics” This song’s ambition meets it’s expectations quickly after the first minute, the first time we hear the accompanying brass section in its totality. The sentiment is more successful from “Machinist” and “The Body Is a Blade” and deserves its spot among the album’s final impressions.
Following the same vulnerability as “Till Death”, “This House” confronts the somber possibility of missing someone — including yourself, at times. Zauner said in an interview, “It’s also about the confused desires you feel for someone you once loved, and coming to the realization that it’s not actually the person you miss, but who you were before” It’s permissible as the most stripped-down song on the album, just Zauner, her acoustic guitar, and an accompanying piano. I personally find Zauner’s first verse in this track to be the most piercing on the project: “What if one day I don’t know you? / What if one day you leave? / And all confused desire and timezone changes / Change what’s left of you and me?” There is a reflective quality within the track that yearns for another time for happiness, in any capacity. It’s hard to not think about somebody when listening to this song; and Zauner emphasizes her lyrics along the climax for that exact effect — it’s been a hard year for all of us, she’s among the many who are able to articulate it. “Here Come the Tubular Bells” follows this fact, the bells across nearly 40 seconds ring in another cycle of experiences, pleasant, unpleasant, and everything in between. And Michelle Zauner will be there with us, too, but who knows which planet she’ll inhabit.
