Lucidity Came Slowly: Japanese Breakfast Interviewed

Much has been made of Japanese Breakfast’s exquisite lyrical ability.

Indeed, it’s impossible to disregard the songwriter’s way with words – real name Michelle Zauner, her debut novel Crying In H Mart was released to outstanding acclaim last year.

Yet she’s also a deeply melodic writer, someone whose use of light and shade can be used to both obscure and add finer detail to the emotional heft of her lyrics.

Last year’s ‘Jubilee’ was an outstanding release, one that saw Japanese Breakfast augmented her poignant guitar-led indie pop with fresh textures, and new sounds. The guitar, however, remained at the centre of her creative method, further sign of the deep and lasting relationship between Michelle and the instrument.

Set to launch a new guitar – The Player Plus Meteora – with Fender, Japanese Breakfast kindly agreed for a quick catch up with Clash.

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Can we talk about those initial memories of picking up a guitar, the natural physical feeling of holding it? Is it something that you’ve always felt comfortable with? Or is it something you’ve had to learn over time?

The first guitar that I ever had was a $100 Yamaha from Costco that my mom bought for me! It was an acoustic guitar. I had no idea at the time, but the action was obviously really terrible – it was very difficult to play any chord because my fingers would have to descend, like, half an inch to reach the fretboard. Then I started taking guitar lessons when I was 16. And I think my first Fender was a Telecaster. And, obviously, going from acoustic to electric felt impossibly cool.  

You know, I’ve never been much of a gearhead admittedly. I would say that I’m more of a songwriter before musician even, but it’s always been the vehicle with which I feel most comfortable songwriting. I just feel like guitar has always been a very comfortable vehicle for me to write songs. Pretty much as soon as I learned my first chords, I was kind of off to the races with doing that.

So writing followed pretty much immediately from getting those chords then…?

Yeah, I think I learned G, C, D and I was away..!

Why do you think the guitar resonates with you so much?

I think that there’s just something that’s immediately cool about playing the guitar! I remember guys in my middle school, in high school, playing guitar and just being like: “I need to be able to do that.” I mean, even if you’re bad at it, especially at that age, it’s just immediately something that makes you cool. And I think it’s a very forgiving instrument, you know – even now. Like, I’ve played piano since I was five, and when I play piano in our live set, I’m stricken with terror!

I’m probably better at the piano than I am at the guitar, but it’s just a completely unforgiving instrument. If you make one wrong note on a piano, everyone, even people without any musical knowledge, just knows that you fucked up. And I think with the guitar, it just looser, it’s sexier. Even when you’re solo-ing you can bend a note to fit into the scale. I think that it just allows a looseness that a lot of other instruments don’t allow for.

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It’s easy to get trapped in certain cycles of playing and writing – as a songwriter, what do you do to break out of that?

That’s a great question. I actually felt like the last two records, ‘Psychopomp’ and ‘Soft Sounds from Another Planet’, I was starting to rely on a lot of the same… I write a lot of songs in D, and I also reuse like a lot of the same chord shapes and I was definitely feeling that for the next album I needed to take some lessons and branch out.

So for ‘Jubilee’ I wrote a lot more on different instruments; a lot more of the songs are actually written on keyboards and piano, on bass, or starting with a drum loop. Just as a way of like getting out of my comfort zone! I also started taking some music theory and guitar lessons. It was just to ‘up my chops’ and push myself.

You mentioned ‘upping your chops’ – is that something that you felt in the past? Have you ever felt a frustration with your musicality? Or do you prefer to allow some naivety in your playing?

I think I was into that for like, the first 10 years of my career. And then I felt like, well, it’s taken me this far. I think now I’m entering a new chapter of my career where I’ve started taking guitar lessons, once a week – and it’s so helpful. I also think that after being a professional touring musician, you encounter so many musicians who have this really advanced education… A lot of the people that are in the professional touring world come from music school. And I think that I became very envious of that education, in some ways.

I’m glad that I didn’t spend a bunch of money doing that, because I never had to and still was able to be nominated for two Grammys! (laughs) But I think at this point in my career, I’m realising that there’s such a world that I don’t know about music! It’s really exciting for me to push myself past this plateau I’ve arrived at and just feel better about doing everything I can to be the best musician I can be. And so that’s really become something that’s important to me.

Are you very structured in your practice? Are you someone who has to set aside an hour every day, in order to just simply hone on things? Or are you a little bit more free in the way you approach it?

I enjoy a regimen – that doesn’t necessarily mean that I follow that regimen all the time, but in an ideal world, I would be practicing at least an hour every day. And I enjoy it! You know, I’ve just started doing weekly lessons. and I think that that’s really helpful. But I’m someone who likes to set a goal and then, like, attack it relentlessly until I feel satisfied. So, like, that’s either writing for a few hours every day, or having a certain project where I have these very regimented deadlines – that is helpful for me.

Are you writing these days? Or are you allowing the last record to exist within you right now?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about writing, so I’m sort of at that stage. I haven’t actually written any new music, but I have been thinking about it a lot… Hopefully it’ll start to happen soon, depending on how busy we are.

Sometimes a guitar will almost literally play itself – have you found that sometimes after purchasing a new instrument you’ll have a burst of energy?

I recently had an event with Fender where I was thinking a lot about the different Fenders that I’ve had in my life, and the different types of music that I’ve made with them. You know, my first Fender was a Telecaster and I used to play in a feminist pop rock band in college. And that was with me through a lot of unattended bar gigs in Philadelphia, a lot of college shows. And then I changed to a Japanese Jaguar when I was in this band called Little Big League that was kind of like an emo punk band that toured college basements, had shows up and down the North-East in the US, in a 15 passenger van… and now I have a Jazzmaster that’s toured the world.

It’s kind of cool to think about different parts of my life in different Fender guitars. It is crazy that I’ve written, you know, five albums on Fender guitars at this point in time. So they have a very special place in my heart, and have certainly inspired different cycles.

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Who’s the last guitar you saw – or heard – who really blew you away, and sent you straight back to the practice room to woodshed?

That’s a great question. There are a couple actually – my friend So-yoon from this Korean band called Se So Neon, they’re playing SXSW and she just hit me up. And when I saw her play guitar in Seoul at a show I was completely blown away. I mean, she’s an incredible, like, funk rock guitarist. She’s legitimately like John Mayer level of wizardry. And of course, my friend Meg Duffy from the band Hand Habits is definitely one of my three all-time favourite guitar players. The others are Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo and Nels Cline from Wilco.

I sang a song with Wilco at ACL Live and watching his control over noise, and just like how fucking cool he looks… Yeah, Nels Cline is definitely a guitar hero of mine. Those are like my three favourite contemporary guitarists.

You fly to SXSW in a few hours, have you been yearning for the connection of live performance?

Oh, yeah, definitely. I’m really excited. I have such a fun time at SXSW. And it always feels like a musical summer camp,, because you get to see a bunch of your friends and it’s kind of just sloppy and really fun. So I’m definitely really looking forward to that feeling. I love that kind of environment. I’m really excited to be back in it again, see what it’s like.

Have you missed the community aspect?

I feel so connected to that community, whether we’re playing music or not – they’re just my people. And I feel like especially the last couple of years, I spent so much time talking to other musicians online, you know, just just trying to support one another. It was a very strange feeling for all of us to be out of work. So, you know, I feel like we’ve built a really wonderful support system. And that like, never really goes away. It’s a very big part of me.

But I think it’s really wonderful to see us all out there again, you know, navigating this together. We’ve just had to do so much; we were given no guidance, and no protocol for what it was meant to like, getting back to doing this thing that we all know how to do. So I feel like it’s been really interesting. Like, there is so much of a community – everyone asking each other, what it’s like out there, and how we can best protect ourselves and how to create a safe show environment. So that’s always been a thing that’s important to me.

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Did you embark on any Zoom writing sessions over the various lockdowns?

I didn’t really do that – you know, it was a tough time for me because I had just finished an album, and the book. So I didn’t really have any creative juice left. I was like, “okay, I’ve finished these huge projects, and I just have to wait for them to come out. I’m gonna go out and like, be a human being and live my life.” And then it was like… “no, actually, you’re gonna not do that!” So I was not really writing that much during the pandemic. I guess, you know, I was finishing the soundtrack for this indie game called Sable. And I did a lot of time working on ambient music, which I think was kind of comforting for me during the October of 2020.

Congratulations again on the book, everyone I’ve spoken to absolutely loves it! But how do you feel about it? It is so incredibly personal, and I imagine writing it took a lot out of you. Do you now feel – almost for your own sake – that you have to look in a different direction?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I do feel that way. It’s not because the book has made me felt that way, I think I’ve just mined that part of myself to its fullest extent, in a way. So I do feel like the writing that I’m interested in, both in music, and in nonfiction is more like, theoretical or something. So yeah, I have some ideas. And I think maybe that’s a pretty natural development for an artist. I think that it will be a different step.

I’m sure that will always be a part of myself, and it will always feel personal. But I think that this was a very raw, necessary type of writing that I hope doesn’t exist in me anymore. Because I think it was just such a huge tragedy in my life, that it would take another thing like that, to make me feel like I needed to do that again.

Do you find that in emotional times of your life being able to just plug in and make an absolute racket with your guitar is something that’s been emotionally soothing to you?

Oh, definitely. I don’t know what to say beyond that – but yes. It definitely is a cathartic and enjoyable feeling. And I think especially now, getting to play with a band – you know, there’s six people in our band now, all making noise. It’s a very, very fun, cathartic experience to be a part of that.

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Japanese Breakfast is working with Fender to launch their new Player Plus Meteora guitars.

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