Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee

On her third album as Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner moves confidently through a space befitting of the multi-hyphenate artist she has become

Album Review by Tony Inglis | 31 May 2021
  • Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
Album title: Jubilee
Artist: Japanese Breakfast
Label: Dead Oceans
Release date: 4 Jun

The late anime filmmaker Satoshi Kon’s final feature Paprika followed characters as they slipped in and out of dreams, stories melding into one another, the line between what is reality and what is imagined blurred beyond comprehension. 'It’s a rush!', sings Michelle Zauner on the opening track of Jubilee, her third album as Japanese Breakfast, also called Paprika. It sets up a collection of songs that dip in and out of worlds, weaving the personal and the fictionalised with literary flair dressed up in celebratory, rousing pop songs.

In this way, Jubilee skews towards her music video direction where the band’s previous two records hued close to the soul-dredging of her work as a now-published memoirist. Even when touching on social commentary (Savage Good Boy) or heartbreak (In Hell), this record is breezy and freeform – the album begins with triumphant horns and ends with a soaring guitar solo.

Blanketed in a warm and positively exuberant aura, it's a far cry from the sci-fi shoegaze of her last album, more buoyed by the city pop of Zauner’s side project Bumper. It’s a jubilant and sweet experience. The least conceptually bound Zauner has been, she moves confidently through a space befitting of the multi-hyphenate artist she has become.

Listen to: Paprika, Be Sweet, Sit


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