Photo Credit: Joyce Jude
It’s often expected that artists put their deepest, darkest emotions on full display for others to consume. For Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast, it’s rare if an emotion goes untouched. The 29-year-old boasts a discography latent with songs about death, sex and heartache that are inspired by some of the most traumatic, impactful experiences of a young person’s life.
Zauner began playing guitar when she was 16, but it wasn’t until college that her music career began taking strides. She didn’t spend the majority of her youth dreaming of rock ’n’ roll glory; it wasn’t until age 19 that she considered a full-time career in music. “When I had my college band, whether I wanted to admit it or not, it was definitely my dream to become a professional, touring musician,” she says. “I had tremendous doubts it would ever happen.”
Zauner quit her day job when she was 25 and began touring extensively. Prior to Japanese Breakfast, she played in smaller indie projects, including Philadelphia-based emo band Little Big League. It was under bleak circumstances that Zauner made the decision to fly solo and release her own music under the name Japanese Breakfast.
In 2013, Zauner received news that everyone hopes they’ll never hear. Her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The diagnosis prompted Zauner to return to her small hometown in rural Oregon to comfort her ailing mother and then to console her newly widowed father. It was during that fragile, unhinged time that Zauner began reconstructing songs from her previous projects and transforming them into Japanese Breakfast tracks.
Even though her return home wasn’t under ideal circumstances, Zauner says her Oregonian roots were impactful on her music’s sound. “I think my spirit is very Pacific Northwestern,” she says. “All of the bands that were really important to me in my teenage years were these Pacific Northwest indie rock bands—really dynamic bands with sort of confessional lyrics; that’s my bag for sure. Bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Built to Spill, Elliott Smith, Mount Eerie, Sleater-Kinney—those were definitely my idols.”
Three years after her mother’s untimely passing, Zauner released Japanese Breakfast’s debut album, Psychopomp. Naturally, the album features a few tracks about her mother’s death and processing the uninhibited heartache that one feels after losing a parent. Zauner’s songwriting has been described as “uncomfortably personal,” and she tends to explore sensitive topics that are oftentimes hard to talk about—much less perform on stage in front of an audience.
“Sometimes, ‘Body Is A Blade’ and ‘Rugged Country’ are hard to play,” says Zauner. “There are some lines in those songs that really transport me back to a painful moment of my life and can be hard to sing about. But when I’m writing songs, I don’t think much about other people. It’s really a private thing where I work through my own emotions.” Death isn’t the only darkness that is present in Zauner’s music. Japanese Breakfast’s discography features songs that touch on frank sexuality, emotional abuse and painful breakups.
Photo Credit: Joyce Jude
Unfortunately, these traumas are almost universally understood among people—young and old. Many fans can connect with Zauner over these shared experiences. She says relating with her listeners is “a special, sacred thing” that gives her career a purpose. “I definitely didn’t anticipate so many listeners relating to me, and it is an overwhelmingly sad honor,” she says.
Thanks to the project’s bedroom-and-basement roots, Japanese Breakfast is often categorized as “lo-fi” music. Zauner says she doesn’t really agree with the label anymore—especially following the release of her sophomore album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet.
“I’d like to think I graduated into making hi-fi records; it’s certainly what I aspire to,” says Zauner. “I do think my beginnings were in lo-fi, though, and that is a gateway to a lot of experimenting—not having the pressures of paying a lot to be in an expensive studio by the hour, really opening things up and being playful in a bedroom studio environment or working on your own.”
Japanese Breakfast plays Turner Hall Ballroom on Friday, July 20, at 8 p.m. with Mothers.
