Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast is on fire. Her memoir Crying in H Mart is on the New York Times bestsellers list, and her band’s latest album ‘Jubilee‘ is garnering widespread critical acclaim.
The message of the third studio album is simple. Joy. An emotion that was evident during her second night in Boston with the sold-out Royale bubbling over with excitement, love, lust, and the thrill from the long-awaited return of live music.
Even before Zauner bounded onto the stage in a white, sleeveless, cut-out dress reminiscent of a wedding dress pulled from a whimsical dress-up trunk, electricity was in the air. The source of the buzz being the whispers of fans talking about the show the night before, glittery gems adorning anticipating eyes, bodies calmly but restlessly swaying back and forth.
Multi-instrumentalist and producer Luna Li and her band helped build the energy and anticipation as the opening act, skipping and dancing around the stage with a butterfly guitar and hair swaying behind her. It was evident from her set as well as Japanese Breakfast’s that the artists and their bands were just as excited as the audience to be back.
The electricity of the night sustained from the Japanese Breakfast’s opening track ‘Paprika’ to the encore of ‘Driving Woman.’ The only time the energy waned was during the heady performance of ‘Road Head,’ the band’s most well-known track off of the 2017 album Soft Sounds From Another Planet.
Despite the relatively mellow vibe of ‘Road Head,’ the effervescence was displayed by fans throughout the venue with an older man in a cashmere sweater bopping his head along to the snares, a couple sharing an embrace and swaying along with the dreamy synths and friends throwing their arms through their hair and up into the air.
The night in its entirety provided the stereotypical, often cheesy, yet very real sentiment of music’s power to unite and create joy — the exact feeling Zauner intended with her creation of ‘Jubilee.‘
Catch Japanese Breakfast at the next tour stop! Tickets are available here.
