Japanese Breakfast – Soft Sounds From Another Planet | Album Review

Oh her sophomore album Michelle Zauner stretches the boundaries of space, time, and love.

Japanese Breakfast began as therapy. An outlet for Michelle Zauner to stitch together scraps of feelings and lo-fi pieces of self-help as a way to cope with life. Initially conceived as a solo spin-off from the Philadelphia-based Little Big League, Japanese Breakfast soon grew into a full-on meditation of death, guilt, and humanity that culminated in 2016’s unparalleled Psychopomp. Clocking in at a blazing 25 minutes, the album tackles life from every angle, directly contrasting the bliss of love with the impenetrable grief of loss. It’s a raw view of life that can only come from losing a parent.  

In her second album as a solo act, Michelle turns her focus toward what comes after death. At its core, Soft Sounds From Another Planet is an album about intimacy. Real intimacy. Love that is complicated, and modernized, and imperfect. It’s not quite as heavy of a listen as Psychopomp but manages to address the broad subject in an equally honest and poetic way.

Soft Sounds opens with the absurdly-groovy “Diving Woman.” A spaced-out bass-driven 6-minute epic that sounds like a track off of a Breeders album or a forgotten Sonic Youth b-side. Based on pre-release interviews, this song seems to be the album’s “thesis” drawing parallels between relationships in 2017 and the Korean tradition of female sea divers called haenyeo.

After outlining her aim to be a “woman of regimen” Michelle repeatedly sings her desires: “I want it all.” After flashes of faded drugs and dead animals Michelle addresses a third party “When I get back there, baby / Gonna make it a home” which is followed up with “You’ll have it all / We’ll have it all.” It’s still a song about insatiability, but also wanting somebody to share it with. The tracks’ jangly 3-minute outro provides a meditative period for the listener to reflect on the tracks’ reassurances that “We’ll have it all.”  

From there Michelle ventures back into the grimy and dark word of modern day Philadelphia with “Road Head” where she recounts the visceral sex scene of a failed relationship over a dreamy soundscape. It’s a sexy but unsettling song, especially when paired with the song’s self-directed video. The outro of this song finds Michelle toying with her own vocal samples on a loop board over the now-familiar beat.

As a side note: I’ve had “Road Head” stuck in my head since seeing the band live in June. Witnessing Michelle improvise this song’s extended outro on her loop board was one of the musical highlights of my year so far. I still haven’t been able to make it through the album without rewinding to listen to this track at least once.

From there the “Road Head” bleeds warmly into the swirl and artificial air of “Machinist” which serves as the album’s lead single. When played live, Michelle introduces “Machinist” as ‘a song about falling in love with a robot.’ The track opens with a calmly-delivered monologue by Michelle that sound as if she’s talking to you directly. “I don’t know how it happened / Was it always this way, and I just couldn’t see it? / Heart burning hot enough for the both of us / I never realized how much you were holding back.” It’s a painful set of lines that immediately launches into a dancy explosion of instrumentation and distorted vocals.

“Machinist” concludes with a chorus that calls back directly to the album’s first track: “Can’t speak / You wanted it all / Let go a piece of your heart / All the pleasure it gives / Leave me, lost in the night / Shadows go in and go by / I just wanted it all” This brings back up the concept of wanting “it all” with some unknown force standing in the way.

When asked about the recurring use of space as a framing device on the album Michelle explained: “I used the theme as a means to disassociate from trauma.” The remainder of Soft Sounds’ tracks revolve around Michelle’s relationships large and small. From meeting her husband at a smoke-filled bar to her bassist who took a break from their previous band to write on Jimmy Fallon. In jumping between all these different people that have filtered in and out of her life, Michelle reveals a little bit about herself piece by piece.

And while I don’t think we’ll ever know all there is to know about Michelle, I’ll happily study each breadcrumb that she lays down. People come in and out of our lives every day. Sometimes it’s a sudden painful shock, sometimes it’s a gradual fade over time. Japanese Breakfast is proof that life continues. And through all the obstacles and cosmic unfairness, there are still people out there for you.

Even as loved ones die. Even as celebrities pass. Even as cruel men continue to win. Happiness can flourish. Sometimes all it takes is a chance encounter at the bar down the street. Or battling through multiple terrible relationships to arrive at the right one. It’s about sharing life and sharing trauma. If you truly want it all, that means good and bad, but you’ll emerge from the other side a more whole person.

Mogwai – Come On Die Young | Album Review

Mogwai are not of this world; they are an entity that was created by a spiritual force and delivered to us in the form of five Scotsman. The band has undeniably evolved over the course of their 20 year career, but at the same time they fall victim to something inherent in the post-rock genre: predictability. While they’ve crafted some incredible albums in their two decades together, Mogwai also tend to “play it safe” by writing music based off a template that they created. Though their albums are never a shot-for-shot recreation of this template, the music instead borrows broad thematic elements from it in a way that allows each album to mirror the others. With the release of their second full-length album Come On Die Young, the band’s template fully-revealed itself. Once listeners connected the dots and discovered the band’s recursive nature, it begged the question: does this predictability negate the beauty of the music?

By the time that Come On Die Young was released in 1999, Mogwai had already been around for nearly half a decade. Over the course of the years since their 1995 formation, the band had been through quite a bit: after the release of two EPs, a remix album, and their critically-acclaimed Mogwai Young Team LP, the band also endured the loss of combo keyboard/guitarist Brendan O'Hare. All of this happened within the space of a few years, and this informed the band’s perspective heavily when making their follow-up. Their second album takes an even darker and more introspective view that attempts to grab listeners by the shoulders and violently shake them into paranoia.

The opening track of Come On Die Young is centered around a sample from a 1977 interview with Iggy Pop, and it accurately describes Mogwai’s views on music:

“I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts, and the souls, and the time, and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it. It’s a term that’s based on contempt, it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that’s rotten about rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know Johnny Rotten but I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself. And that music is so powerful that it’s quite beyond my control and ah… when I’m in the grips of it I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn’t feel anything and you didn’t want to either. You know? Do you understand what I’m saying sir?”

Though Mogwai aren’t a punk band, you don’t have to play punk to be punk. You also don’t need to be punk to appreciate what Iggy Pop is saying. The DIY punk spirit can take many forms, and it doesn’t require a battle jacket or a mohawk, just motivation and music. At the same time “punk rock” is a term used by people who don’t understand it, people who wield the word as a means of categorization. Written out it sounds far less confrontational than it comes across in the interview, but when backed by Mogwai’s subtle instrumentals, it feels like a pure wave of power. This track is letting the listener know what this album is really about.

Come On Die Young is an album that I received from a friend sandwiched between hundreds of other songs ranging from Hoodie Allen to 31Knots. It took me a while to get around to this album initially because I could tell from the cover that I’d need to be in a certain headspace to listen to it.

Immediately following the Iggy Pop-infused opening track is the lullaby-like “Cody.” This song lulls the listener into a relaxed state that the band then repeatedly disrupts over the course of the next ten tracks. This type of mellow, quietly-sung track appears on nearly every one of Mogwai’s albums. Whether it’s “R U Still In 2 It” on Young Team or “Blues Hour” on their most recent LP Rave Tapes. This is the first element of Mogwai’s “template” that reveals itself through the course of Come On Die Young. Repeating the same musical theme is something Mogwai often gets criticized for, the argument is that for a band who has been around two decades, one would hope that their style has morphed more noticeably than it has. To that I ask 'why?’ Having a track like “Cody” on most of their records gives their discography a common thread. It’s a Cloud Atlas-esque repeating of themes that gives their entire career noticeable touchstones. Aside from the fact that “Cody” is beautifully sung, I don’t think that this repetition of having a “hushed song” detracts from any one of their albums.

The song “Kappa” represents another Mogwai staple I’ll call “peaks and valleys.” The song starts with a single jangly guitar. After a few seconds of acclimating to its melody, a deep overwhelming drum beat kicks in that overwhelms the soundscape. The drum sounds like a deep, dark well, something that the girl from The Ring would crawl out of. From there a second guitar enters seemingly just to provide long stretches of distortion. By the halfway mark of the song, all of the instruments have morphed together into one massive wall of sound that come together for brief moments, then suddenly fade leaving the initial guitar and drums alone again. The song peaks for brief moments of harmony, then immediately falls apart for valleys of lonely guitar. The song eventually culminates in one final peak, then crashes into a fade of distortion. This yin and yang of chaos is something that appeals to me in nearly every genre.

“Christmas Steps” is another beautiful example of the mood that Mogwai can slowly build. The song starts out at zero and introduces a simple but towering riff that slowly builds up steam leading to a full-on explosion complete with tight drumming and a memorable guitar melody.To me, it exemplifies the band’s ability to introduce a progression then transition that into a groove in a way that comforts and then jars the listener. The track begins with a solitary guitar seemingly playing into the void of space, the band then slowly and gradually builds up to absolute chaos as they slowly fill the space with more instruments. The guitar that was playing into blackness is now surrounded by other instruments eventually that fill the world with more color. First a subtle drum tick, then another guitar, and a bass. From there the music speeds up into an oppressive riff that consumes the entire song. It’s a thing of beauty.

One of the reasons I love Mogwai so much is because it’s perfect reading music. As a college student so much of my life is spent nose-down in a textbook or knee-deep in an essay, and I’m the type of person that gets easily distracted by vocals (or even melodies.) Mogwai is perfect background music, and while that may sound like an insult, it’s actually one of the highest compliments I feel that I can give music. Come On Die Young is musical enough to stand on its own, but it’s melodic and instrumental enough to be put on in the background and fade into the environment. I listen to a lot of post-rock and instrumental music, but Mogwai is the one constant. They are the one group that I keep coming back to, and Come On Die Young is the perfect entry point to the band.

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Miscellaneous Thoughts:

-How badass is that title? Come On Die Young sounds like something you’d find in the hardcore punk section of the record store. It’s almost anthemic. It’s something you want to hear yelled from the rooftops, or get carved into your skin.

-Even without a set of traditional vocals to accompany the instruments, this album does an excellent job of depicting an extremely dark, bleak atmosphere. It’s not completely hopeless, but it feels pretty damn close.

-“Christmas Steps” is an incredible song, possibly my favorite from the band. I linked to “Xmas Steps,” an early version of the song from the band’s No Education = No Future (Fuck the Curfew) EP that I prefer.

-The song “Ex-Cowboy” is another great early example of the band playing a song, then taking it down to near-inaudible levels only to then bring it back up into a disruptive, volcanic eruption of noise.

-Bookend: Come On Die Young ends with a sad, moody trumpet and echo-laden guitar played over warped and reversed bits of the Iggy interview from the opening track “Punk Rock:”