Last year, Philadelphia-based musician Michelle Zauner released her debut LP under the moniker Japanese Breakfast: Psychopomp, nine glittering pop songs that pass like an electric storm, with blinding flashes of nostalgia, grief, and momentary joy.
In 2014 Zauner’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, so she moved home to rural Oregon. Written in the wake of her death, it’s the product of all kinds of emptiness—the void her mother left, the strangeness of returning to your hometown, the people who let you down—but Zauner processes the pain freely, and lets light poke holes through the grayness. On opening track “In Heaven” she sings, “I came here for the long haul/Now I leave here as an empty fucking hole,” but she’s surrounded by gorgeous, crystalline swirls of twinkling piano and strings. This contrast between hollow anguish and striking beauty is what makes Psychopomp so great: It’s Zauner’s self-portrait from life’s darkest moments, but even there, she finds hope.
Next month she’s releasing another Japanese Breakfast record, Soft Sounds from Another Planet. True to the name, the new album sounds like it was recorded in outer space, with heavy synth and electro-pop beats. Zauner commands its gigantic, wildly expansive tracks with grace and power—just see the “Boyish,” an orchestral ode to romantic suffering and unrequited desire. “I can’t get you off my mind,” she croons, “I can’t get you off in general/So here we are, we’re just two losers/I want you and you want something more beautiful.” It’s shocking, that this mini-masterpiece fits into just three-and-a-half minutes. But that’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet—Zauner unfolds an entire universe, and for 12 songs, we get to visit.