Today, Japanese Breakfast has released a music video for “The Body Is A Blade,” taken from the critically acclaimed album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, out now on Dead Oceans.
The video sees Michelle Zauner on director’s duty again, with frequent collaborator Adam Kolodny as the cinematographer. Zauner states that she sought inspiration for this video by searching through old photographs in her family home; “I’ve always loved the way old photographs look. For this video I spent a lot of time searching family albums for sets of old photographs to animate.”
We get a peek behind the veil of Japanese Breakfast’s already personal music in a visceral and affecting way; single camera shots of Zauner are juxtaposed by beautiful and poignant old family photographs of her parents and especially her mother.
“I wanted this video to commemorate my mother who died three years ago today”, she continues, “It felt fitting for the song to create a really personal mixed media piece, almost like a moving scrapbook.”
Japanese Breakfast has also announced 2018 tour dates with Jay Som and Hand Habits. All dates below.
TOUR DATES:
10/21 – Bristol, GB @ Simple Things Festival
10/23 – Cologne, DE @ Blue Shell
10/24 – Hamburg, DE @ Hakken
10/25 – Berlin, DE @ Badenhouse
10/26 – Paris, FR @ Pop Up Du Label
10/27 – Gent, BE @ NEST
10/28 – Amsterdam, NL @ London Calling
11/2 – Brighton, GB @ The Joker *SOLD OUT*
11/3 – Manchester, GB @ Soup Kitchen *SOLD OUT*
11/4 – Edinburgh, GB @ The Mash House
11/5 – Glasgow, GB @ The Hug and Pint
11/6 – Leeds, GB @ Headrow House
11/7 – London, GB @ The Dome Tufnell Park *SOLD OUT*
2/15 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos ^
2/16 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore ^
2/17 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom (Sabertooth Festival) ^
2/19 – Reno, NV @ Holland Project ^
2/23 – Fresno, CA @ Strummer’s ^
2/24 – Pomona, CA @ The Glasshouse ^
^ w/ Jay Som and Hand Habits
ABOUT JAPANESE BREAKFAST:
“The title Soft Sounds From Another Planet alludes to the promise of something that may or may not be there. Like a hope in something more. The songs are about human resilience and the strength it takes to claw out of the darkest of spaces.”
Michelle Zauner wrote the debut Japanese Breakfast album in the weeks after her mother died of cancer, thinking she would quit music entirely once it was done. That wasn’t the case. When Psychopomp was released to acclaim in 2016, she was forced to confront her grief. Zauner would find find herself reliving traumatic memories multiple times a day during interviews, trying to remain composed while discussing the most painful experience of her life. Her sophomore album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, is a transmutation of mourning, a reflection that turns back on the cosmos in search of healing.
“I want to be a woman of regimen,” Zauner sings over a burbling synth on the album’s opening track “Diving Woman.” This serves as Zauner’s mission statement: stick to the routine lest you get derailed, don’t cling to the past, don’t descend. In fact, ascend to the stars; Zauner found artistic solace removed from Earth, in outer space and science fiction. “I used the theme as a means to disassociate from trauma,” she explains. “Space used as a place of fantasy.”
And yet, Soft Sounds From Another Planet isn’t a concept album. Over the course of 12 tracks, Zauner explores an expansive thematic universe, a cohesive outpouring of unlike parts structured to create a galaxy of her own design. In the instrumental “Planetary Ambience,” synths communicate the way extraterrestrials might, and on the shapeshifting single “Machinist,” which Zauner has been performing live for over a year now, she details the sci-fi narrative of a woman falling in love with a machine. “It’s pure fiction,” she explains, “But it can map onto real relationships in a relevant way.” The track, which begins with spoken-word ambience, moves into autotune ’80s pop bliss and ends with a sultry saxophone solo, perfectly marries the experience: there’s a perceptible humanity in mechanical, bodily events.
Within its astral production, much of Soft Sounds From Another Planet stays grounded. “Road Head” is the last chest compression in attempt to resuscitate a doomed relationship, while the penultimate track “This House” is an acoustic dirge that honors Zauner’s chosen family. The baroque pop “Boyish” has a haunting, crystalline clarity that recalls the pathos of a Roy Orbison ballad, while “Body is a Blade” embraces the dark intimacy of Zauner’s Pacific Northwest heroes Elliott Smith and Mount Eerie.
With help from co-producer Craig Hendrix (who also co-produced Little Big League’s debut) and Jorge Elbrecht, (Ariel Pink, Tamaryn) who mixed the album, Zauner recontextualizes her bedroom pop beginnings, expanding and maturing her sound. The sheer massiveness of the big room production on Soft Sounds From Another Planet introduces listeners to a new Japanese Breakfast. Zauner’s familiar, capacious voice will serve as their guide.
“Your body is a blade that moves while your brain is writhing,” she sings. “Knuckled under pain you mourn but your blood is flowing.” There’s discernible pain in the phrasing, Zauner recognizing limitation, a lack of control, but then subverting the feeling, creating her own musical language for confronting trauma. Where Psychopomp introduced the world to Japanese Breakfast, Soft Soundsdives deeper. It builds space where there is none, and suggests that in the face of tragedy, we find ways to keep on living.
JAPANESE BREAKFAST
SOFT SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER PLANET DEAD OCEANS
JULY 14, 2017
- Diving Woman
- Road Head
- Machinist
- Planetary Ambience
- Soft Sounds From Another Planet
- Boyish
- 12 Steps
- Jimmy Fallon Big
- The Body Is A Blade
- Till Death
- This House
- Here Come The Tubular Bells
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