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Japanese Breakfast's Jubilee is the sound of an artist deciding to choose joy. After two albums shaped by grief, Michelle Zauner made a record full of horns, strings, synths and big pop hooks, and it holds the most wide ranging arrangements of her career. If you know it only from a song or two, the full album rewards a proper listen, ideally on vinyl. Here is what Jubilee is, how it came together and where to buy a copy.
What it is
Jubilee is the third album from Japanese Breakfast, the project of singer, songwriter and producer Michelle Zauner. It was released on June 4, 2021, by Dead Oceans, and runs 10 tracks, opening with "Paprika" and closing with "Posing for Cars."
Dead Oceans says Zauner knew from the moment she began writing that she wanted to call the album Jubilee, because a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time, a festival to usher in a new era.
The backstory
To understand why Jubilee feels so bright, it helps to know what came before. According to the label, Zauner's first album, Psychopomp, was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, and her second, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, took the grief of her mother's death and used it to explore the cosmos.
Jubilee turns toward happiness instead. Dead Oceans frames it as Zauner ready to fight for joy, and to do it with a joyful noise. It is still a thoughtful, sometimes heavy record, but the mood has shifted from mourning to moving forward.
The sound
Jubilee has the widest range of arrangements Zauner had attempted. Before making it, she took music theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time, aiming to push herself as a composer, producer and arranger. You can hear that ambition everywhere:
- "Paprika" opens the album with layer upon layer of triumphant horns and marching snares.
- "Be Sweet," co written with Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing, is a jagged, propulsive slice of 80s style pop.
- "Slide Tackle" rides a crest of saxophones and synthesizers.
- "Sit" builds pulsing walls of synthgaze and piano.
- "Tactics" floats on nostalgic strings.
- "Savage Good Boy," co produced with (Sandy) Alex G, imagines a billionaire trying to talk his lover into joining him underground as the apocalypse unfolds.
- "Posing for Cars," one of the longest Japanese Breakfast songs, ends the record with a cathartic guitar solo of nearly three minutes.
The songwriting
Zauner often writes through characters on Jubilee. On "Posing In Bondage," she imagines a woman left behind in an empty house, singing to an absent lover. Another song is written from the perspective of a small town Indiana boy saying goodbye to a girlfriend leaving to study abroad. Yet the label notes that she is hardly fictionalizing, pouring her own life into each of these worlds so the stories feel real.
The album also has something to say. Zauner has said she did not want to weave politics into her music in a cheap way, but could not make something that does not comment on the world we live in. "Savage Good Boy" is the clearest example, turning modern excess into a darkly funny love song.
Why it is cool
Jubilee is the rare album that is both fun and deep. You can put it on for the hooks, the horns and the sheer color of it, then come back and find lyrics about ambition, love, money and what it takes to stay hopeful. It is a record about choosing happiness, made by someone who knows how hard that choice can be.
It also works beautifully on vinyl. An album this layered, from brass to strings to that closing guitar solo, rewards a good turntable and an uninterrupted listen from side one to the end.
Who should buy it
Buy Jubilee if you love bright, ambitious indie pop with real emotional weight. It is also a fine way into Japanese Breakfast as a whole, since its hooks pull you in before the deeper lyrics land.
For more from the same label, see our Dead Oceans starter guide, plus Mitski's Be the Cowboy and Khruangbin's Con Todo El Mundo. Buying for someone else? Our gifts for vinyl collectors has more ideas.
Where to buy
For more records worth owning, browse our vinyl section.
