Jubilee
| Japanese Breakfast
Jubilee
Jubilee is the third studio album by American indie project Japanese Breakfast. It was released on June 4, 2021, through Dead Oceans.The album comes shortly after the release of Michelle Zauner's memoir, Crying in H Mart, on April 20, 2021 -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Michelle Zauner embraces the spotlight and goes for the brass ring on her third album, a stylish and eclectic record that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities.
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Stereogum
How many can make an album like Jubilee? To put it another way… How’s it feel to witness Zauner at the height of her powers? Captivating every heart? Projecting her visions to strangers who feel it, who listen, who linger on every word? Oh, it’s a rush!
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Loud and Quiet
A veteran of capturing the pain of illness and death with her music, Zauner teaches us how to resist despair and find joy amidst tragedy – a lesson needed now more than ever.
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Sputnik Music
As such, Jubilee feels heartfelt, no matter the production values and the intended catchiness.The early June release date was a wise decision, as this is a colorful summer album to the core.
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Rolling Stone
Indie-pop artist Michelle Zauner’s latest is her most ecstatic-sounding LP to date.
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Variety
Indeed, the benefit of perspective is a key facet to what makes “Jubilee” tick. It takes all the things that have always served Japanese Breakfast well — Zauner’s awareness of her voice and how best to deploy it, her knack for narrative and story as well as great hooks — and offers them fresh soil in which to grow.
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NME
Michelle Zauner’s third album under her shoegaze-inspired moniker is a brilliantly forward-thinking stab at creating pure joy.
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Slug Magazine
Through her music and memoir, Zauner has come to terms with her grief—she’s moved around a little in it. Now Zauner gives us Jubilee, and the record fits just right.
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Crack Magazine
These songs have a deep zest for life despite the knowledge of its fleeting nature. With Jubilee, Zauner honours her past and pushes forward, urging us all to do the same.
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The Alternative
Jubilee is not just a record about joy, though its title still feels quite apt. The word doesn’t solely encompass an outpouring of levity but also acknowledges the hard times overcome. Michelle Zauner does exactly this. While she’s grasping at her joyous future, she’s holding on to the things that stood in the way, and nodding to how they’ve helped her grow. They’re not swept under the rug. Wherever Zauner takes Japanese Breakfast next, and when we can hear that, is ultimately up to her alone. She has given us as listeners more than enough to hold us over until then and given what could be her magnum opus.
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Vinyl Chapters
Jubilee from Japanese Breakfast is a delight to listen to, not just because the songs are immaculately created and produced, but because we’re also seeing Michelle Zauner strive towards happiness. This is the most settled and playful we’ve seen the artist to date and she suits a record that slowly unfurls like a delicate flower.
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Clash Magazine
‘Jubilee’ may be the sound of one person’s desire to chase after sunnier horizons, but after the horror show we’ve all been through, it makes damn fine accompaniment for any listener looking forward. She’s landed three knockouts and is only getting stronger.
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The Line of Best Fit
Japanese Breakfast thrives on Jubilee’s expressive and bright vision.
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DIY Magazine
‘Jubilee’ finds its creator older and wiser with melody, lyrics and storytelling pulling focus in a fashion that cements Michelle Zauner as a true creative force to be reckoned with. From here on out, Japanese Breakfast can go anywhere and we’ll follow.
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Beats Per Minute
Maybe that’s what makes Jubilee so special: only Zauner could have fashioned these songs both as tenderly bright and violently sad as they’ve become. Not one colour: an entire spectrum of female experience, struggle and fulfilment.
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Post-Trash
Through reaching an artistic zenith, Michelle Zauner has solidified that her longevity will be everlasting, that perhaps she doesn’t even need the good luck bestowed by the hoshigaki of the cover. Just as the persimmon dries, Jubilee too will grow sweeter, sounder and more magical with age.
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In Review Online
In these ways, Jubilee proves a smart and enticing switch-up for Zauner and Japanese Breakfast, one that broadens the band’s sound while accommodating the songwriter’s organic spiritual/emotional journey. What might have been another tired, if functional, act of indie rock pastiche is instead something more complicated, a work that chooses to revel in the contradictory.
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Slant Magazine
The album conceives of the exuberant possibilities of life and love while teasing out their more bracing realities.
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Hotpress
Jubilee may well bring Japanese Breakfast to a brand new audience, despite flying mostly under the radar thus far in her career.
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KTSW 89.9
Jubilee is a wonderful portrayal of how talented Michelle Zauner is as an artist. Not one song by Japanese Breakfast holds the same aesthetic, although it may hold the same theme. From Zauner’s recognizable bright vocals to incorporating the use of a drumline and violins, Jubilee was a joy the whole way through. I long for more songs like “Be Sweet” which showed off the quirky pop side of Japanese Breakfast, and “Savage Good Boy” which played on comical lyrics.
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The Student Playlist
Michelle Zauner delivers a stylish and diverse album of shape-shifting pop for her third Japanese Breakfast album ‘Jubilee’.
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NME
Michelle Zauner’s third album under her shoegaze-inspired moniker is a brilliantly forward-thinking stab at creating pure joy.
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The Independent
Japanese Breakfast makes an ecstatic evolution on her third album.
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The Daily Californian
‘Jubilee’ is Japanese Breakfast’s dreamy, radiant ode to joy.
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The Skinny
On her third album as Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner moves confidently through a space befitting of the multi-hyphenate artist she has become.
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Stack
Jubilee achieves this easily, favouring synth pop sonics that take Zauner’s sound to a completely new level. This isn’t to say that Japanese Breakfast’s sound isn’t still electrifying; just take the outro for the track Savage Good Boy, which sees Zauner applying a robotic effect to her vocal before it reaches its staggering apex. Swells of emotion are interspersed throughout the record, though perhaps the most striking moment is found on penultimate track Tactics, a song that speaks of romantic attachment as strings and a delicate keyboard tug at the heart strings.
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The Needle Drop
The additional instrumentation doesn't always do Jubilee favors, but rarely distracts from Michelle's strengths as a lyricist and performer.
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Ben's Beat
Jubilee is an emotionally overwhelming album in the best possible way. The band’s typical elements of processing life’s sadder moments are still there, but Zauner’s musical approach to her coping mechanism has changed entirely. It can be hard to find that genuine rush these days, but when it comes, its newfound scarcity makes it all the more exciting – this album is what that sounds like.
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The Last Mixed Tape
Japanese Breakfast moves into her own Imperial Phase with music that’s relevant and self-defined.
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All Music
Thankfully, just as with Crying in H Mart, Jubilee is an album that showcases Zauner's talents to their fullest and makes crushing on Japanese Breakfast hard to resist.
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Narc Magazine
Plain synth chords trundle along over basic drum patterns, while Michelle Zauner’s vocal and instrumental melodies are at best forgettable, at worst totally insipid. There are no cheeky surprises, no jolts of ecstatic energy, between the aforementioned single and the beautiful, but totally out of place, slowcore ballad album closer. There are flecks of pop bliss here and there, like the groovy muted guitar flourishes in Slide Tackle, but they don’t save Jubilee from being a misfire.
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Stereoboard
There isn’t such a thing as a bad Japanese Breakfast record at this point in the game, but ‘Jubilee’ holds its predecessors at arm’s length in a way that appears intentional from a thematic point of view, and natural from a quality standpoint. These are great songs performed with wit and style. You can’t really ask for more than that.
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inews
Optimism and confidence burst from Michelle Zauner’s third album.
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Under the Radar Magazine
Jubilee’s 10 songs arrive fully baked, frosted with bigger beats and softer swirls, all stacked carefully on top of each other.
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mxdwn Music
The 10 tracks of Jubilee tell a story like that of a pop art person experiencing life’s highs and lows, and it flows together insanely well.
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Pop Goes the Weasel
‘Jubilee’ is the third Japanese Breakfast album, and the first that doesn’t feel intrinsically steeped in, and overwhelmed by, grief. The curtains have been pulled back. Light pours in. Throughout ‘Jubilee’, Japanese Breakfast still probe the complexities of love in a transient world but the result is a celebration of life as a strange and unpredictable but ultimately wonderful thing. Lively, sophisticated and intelligent, these songs represent a remarkable step up for Japanese Breakfast.
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Gigwise
An alt-pop record that poses larger than life questions.
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Medium
‘Jubilee’ exists in the knowledge that joy in its abstract is meaningless; only when laid against the backdrop of suffering can it’s magnitude be fully appreciated.
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Bust
Japanese Breakfast's "Jubilee" Is All At Once Dreamy, Intimate, And Joyful.
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Northern Transmissions
Jubilee, the third record from Michelle Zauner is an exuberant affair, punctuated with a keen perspective about everything that falls under the umbrella of life, love and all types of relationships.
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The Forty-Five
joyful, twinkling pomp, despite the circumstance.
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