Japanese Breakfast: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Oct. 25, 2017, Marissa Lorusso As Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner writes sparkling, opulent dream pop about grief and love (and, occasionally, robots). After releasing its debut album, Psychopomp last year, the band returned with this year s stunning Soft Sounds From Another Planet. Where Psychopomp, written in the immediate aftermath of the death of Zauner s mother, zeroed in on the experience of Zauner s grief, Soft Sounds widens her aperture, featuring paeans to her coping mechanisms, ruminations on crooked relationship dynamics and said scifi robot fantasy. At its Tiny Desk concert, the band swapped out Soft Sound s gauzy, astral synths for acoustic guitar and piano, and was joined by members of Washington, D. C. string quartet Rogue Collective. Zauner had wanted to do something special for the performance, and was tipped off by Landlady s Adam Schatz that the Rogue Collective make pretty great Tiny Desk partners. The Collective practiced with Japanese Breakfast the day before the Tiny Desk, and