Michelle Zauner embraces the spotlight and goes for the brass ring on her third album, a stylish and eclectic record that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities.
This spring, somewhere between her memoir Crying in H Mart debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times’ Best Sellers list and her turn as a vampiric sugar baby to an ex-Soprano in a self-directed video, it officially became Jbrekkie Season. Michelle Zauner, the musician, author, director, and food enthusiast behind Japanese Breakfast, had seemingly planned it that way, holding her ambitious third record—and first in four years—until the pandemic eased. As she declared in press releases and interviews, Jubilee would be a celebration of joy after years of feeling defined by her writing about grief, following the loss of her mother to cancer in 2014.
This jubilee, like many others, comes with an air of regality: triumphant horns and swooping strings fill the music like a lush 2000s chamber pop record. But no album about joy would be complete without a few killer pop songs, from the sexy-in-slow-motion “Posing in Bondage” to “Be Sweet,” which is frankly begging for an ’80s montage scene to soundtrack. Some have positioned Taylor Swift’s folklore as the great nexus of pop music and indie culture, but an album like Jubilee is a more interesting example of pop’s fluidity: a true blue rock star tempered in the waters of shoegaze, Pacific Northwest rock, and twee, making music that naturally bridges the gap between dream pop and electropop. It’s an exuberant listen that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities, packed with Zauner’s sharp observations and frank desires.
You can feel that specific buzz in the opening track “Paprika,” which layers martial snares, bubbling orbs of synth, and horns that practically announce “I’m here!” The lyrics colorfully illustrate the blessing and the burden of getting to express yourself creatively for a living: “How’s it feel to be at the center of magic/To linger in tones and words?/I opened the floodgates and found no water, no current, no river, no rush.” But Zauner clearly had no trouble finding inspiration for the song itself, which comes to life with a playful sense of grandeur that’s hard not to get swept up in, waltzing yourself around the house, tingling with wonder. When she’s on, her energy is completely infectious, and the beginning of the album thrives on this current while accommodating numerous styles. Swooning small-town ode “Kokomo, IN” channels Belle and Sebastian at their most orchestral, “Slide Tackle” splits the difference between Arthur Russell’s lo-fi disco and Carly Rae Jepsen’s sax moments, and “Posing in Bondage,” with its striking vocal effects and flickering synths that bring to mind flashing tones, is like Zauner’s more guitar-driven take on Lorde’s Melodrama. They’re all quite different and yet feel perfectly at home next to one another on this mission to sustain bliss.
Happiness, unfortunately, needs to be tended to constantly. As much as Japanese Breakfast tries to throw her arms around joy, the back half of Jubilee can get pretty dark, whether it’s the more overtly fictional songs or Zauner crooning lines like, “Hell is finding someone to love and I can’t have you.” Furthering the Jbrekkie sci-fi tradition and exploring the dubious morality of the super-rich, “Savage Good Boy” is told from the perspective of a capitalist space colonizer seeking safety from the coming apocalypse (think Elon Musk but also a Daddy in bad jeans). “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,” she sings calmly, her words front and center. A driving guitar and piano track, it opens with the chirp of pitch-shifted harmonies and ends with a distorted guitar solo that’ll make your arm hairs stand at attention. In less than two and a half minutes, Zauner crafts this perfect snowglobe of a villain and his beloved floating away, left to wine and dine on freeze-dried food while convincing themselves that a future civilization depends on their sex life.
Michelle Zauner can write devastating prose that explores knotty subjects like loss and her Korean-American identity, as well as craft these elaborate, world-building videos. She navigates the musical hopscotch with ease on Jubilee, even helping to arrange the string and horn parts, but, occasionally, Zauner strains to reach the vocal heights needed to nail the glory notes. Rock stars who come out of punk traditions rarely have the same kind of range as pop singers, and when Zauner moves from breathy, pretty modes into a higher register or a place where soulfulness might enter the picture, her voice can sound a little thin against the glossier production.
The small flaws along the way fall by the wayside in pursuit of something greater. This is a record about happiness and wanting so badly to feel happy, two similar emotional states separated by a chasm. The slow words that fill up the first half of final song “Posing in Cars,” a slow ballad about loneliness and a love that grows deep within, are soon exploded by an epic rock coda in the style of the War on Drugs or mid-era Wilco. It’s challenging, a moonshot at an ecstatic catharsis, that nearly rises to the level of a show-stopping album closer, complete with Zauner shredding until the lights go out. Listeners love Japanese Breakfast because she gives you everything: a buffet of sub-genres, blunt confessions, larger concepts, and on-point orchestration, led by someone with undeniable charisma. Listening to Michelle Zauner go all in on Jubilee provides every bit of the joy she intended.
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