, several self-directed music videos, and the score for video game Sable. On stage, the synth swell of Sable's lead song, Glider, led perfectly into the playful Jubilee track Savage Good Boy, flaunting the breadth of Zauner's powers. Suspi){kind=link}
Michelle Zauner’s band delighted the Kentish Town crowd with their idiosyncratic songs – and introduced a surprise guest at the end
“How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers?” asked Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner during her first song at London’s Kentish Town Forum on Tuesday night. She must, by now, have some idea. Last year, the Korean-American artist’s memoir Crying In H Mart – about grief, food, and memory – became a New York Times runaway bestseller, also serving as a neat foil to her music, including the 2021 Grammy-nominated third album Jubilee.
“It’s a rush!” she concluded. It certainly looked that way as she danced about the stage in a baroque white Simone Rocha dress, striking an enormous gong, moving like a marionette at the keys, or jamming with her enthusiastic guitarist husband. It was a rush for the audience too – most of the time. Other shows on this short, sold-out UK and European tour have sometimes felt sedate, but London’s young, rapt crowd responded immediately to the opening songs Paprika and the Kate Bush-esque single Be Sweet, both taken from Jubilee.
Even with a saxophone and violin present on stage, it wasn’t easy to recreate the vibrant arrangements that earned Jubilee – a record ribboned with joy after two albums marked by the grief of losing her mother to pancreatic cancer in 2014 – its acclaim. A swampy sound system drained some of these earlier songs of their power, but plenty of the flourishes that lift Zauner’s music remained present: sax solos, harpsichord-style stabs on The Body Is a Blade, the tongue-in-cheek jangle of Everybody Wants to Love You, and set highlight Posing in Bondage, a masterpiece in electronic pacing.
Six years ago to the day, the band played their first show in London to a far smaller audience. “My how we’ve grown,” remarked Zauner. Her output now includes her memoir (soon to become a film), several self-directed music videos, and the score for video game Sable. On stage, the synth swell of Sable’s lead song, Glider, led perfectly into the playful Jubilee track Savage Good Boy, flaunting the breadth of Zauner’s powers.