Japanese Breakfast played Royale – 9/9
Michelle Zauner and company swept into Boston for the first of a two-night run at the Royale last Thursday night.
In the course of her first two records as Japanese Breakfast, Zauner emerged as a distinctive figure in a crowded field where it’s easy for artists to feel faceless. 2016’s Psychopomp and the following year’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet channeled dream-pop touchstones but imbued them with personality which, coupled with Zauner’s incisive, funny and disarming lyrics, signaled staying power and a profile that could only rise. This June’s Jubilee delivered on that promise, boasting Zauner’s sharpest songwriting and most irresistible hooks yet. It’s her best record to date and its widespread hype is plenty justified.
On the heels of a triumphant five-night stand in Philly (which saw Union Transfer renaming its coatcheck in honor of their star former employee), Zauner opened another leg of the U.S. Jubilee tour at Boston’s Royale with a gig that, if you’ll pardon the low-hanging fruit, was indeed jubilant. Following a well-matched opening set from Luna Li, she and the band began the night by punctuating album-opener “Paprika” with the dramatic crash of a gong (Boris-style, if slightly more compact) before rolling straight into instant-classic lead single “Be Sweet.” Having missed the last pair of Royale gigs back in 2019, this was the biggest room I’ve seen them play, and they filled the space beautifully. Zauner has always been a magnetic presence on stage, and she’s only become more compelling with bigger and bigger crowds to play to. This edition of the backing band, including Newton’s own Adam Schatz, translated Jubilee‘s sonic richness to the stage with ease, and landed the moods of Zauner’s songs both new and old (an introspective “Posing in Bondage,” an effervescent “Everybody Wants to Love You”) flawlessly. Throwing a Dolly Parton cover into the mix (“Here You Come Again,” a personal fav) was also an inspired move. And fittingly enough for a record that feels like Zauner’s most polished body of work, the stage production took a step up from the band’s smaller club days too, with a grid of lights illuminating and silhouetting in a shifting mood-ring range of hues.
With an adoring crowd in tow (and one of the most mask-compliant I’ve seen at an indoor gig as of late), it was an evening commanded by an artist at the peak of their powers. The ascendency of Japanese Breakfast continues apace.
Scroll below for a gallery of the evening.
[Fun side story: I missed getting into the pit for Luna Li’s opening set (I’d recommend an early early arrival if you’ve got a Royale show coming up, as the vaccine check at the door seems to be slowing down the entry process considerably), so I took the opportunity to try out an old M42 screw-mount lens that I recently picked up on Craigslist and adapted for my DSLRs for most of the photos from that set. Pretty happy with the results given that it was a challenging process of manually focusing in the dark.]
