Japanese Breakfast, the musical project of multi-hyphenate Michelle Zauner, has shared a self-directed video for “Posing In Bondage,” the latest single from her upcoming album Jubilee.
“‘Posing in Bondage’ is a ballad about loneliness and longing, a song about two people who want so badly to connect but are never quite able to do so. No place felt lonelier than an empty grocery at 1 AM” says Zauner. “The video is actually an epilogue to the one that will accompany our next single, here presented out of order.“
Last month Japanese Breakfast made their late night television debut on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon performing “Be Sweet,” the acclaimed lead single from Jubilee.
Additionally, Zauner is releasing her long-awaited book based on her viral 2018 New Yorker essay, Crying In H Mart, later this year. The unflinching and powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity is due 5 August.
Jubilee is available for pre-order now and due 4 June via Dead Oceans.
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.
How does she do it? With a joyful noise. Jubilee bursts with the most wide-ranging arrangements of Zauner’s career. Each song unfurls a new aspect of her artistry.
In the years leading up to Jubilee, Zauner also took theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time, in an effort to improve her range as a songwriter: “I’ve never wanted to rest on any laurels. I wanted to push it as far as it could go, inviting more people in and pushing myself as a composer, a producer, and arranger.”
Throughout Jubilee, Zauner is hardly fictionalizing her lyrics, instead pouring 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.
TOUR DATES:
8/7 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
9/14 – Columbus, OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
9/16 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
9/17 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
9/18 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre
9/19 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Ave
9/25 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune
9/27 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
9/28 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
10/1 – San Francisco, CA @ Regency