{"id":2054,"date":"2021-03-08T08:36:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T16:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/60428974cfdd04cfc4cf6607"},"modified":"2021-03-08T08:36:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T16:36:24","slug":"japanese-breakfast-is-working-the-pain-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/authoritydaily.com\/japanese-breakfast-is-working-the-pain-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Breakfast Is Working the Pain Away"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the spring of 2014, after learning that a cancerous tumor was growing in her mom\u2019s stomach, Zauner moved back to Eugene. She helped her 56-year-old mother through chemotherapy for stage IV pancreatic cancer, learning how to cook easily-digestible Korean staples and carefully counting every calorie consumed. The ensuing months were a devastating blur of \u201cchemo head and skeletal bodies and logging milligrams of hydrocodone,\u201d she writes in Crying in H Mart<\/em>\u2014and then a brief bright spot. Zauner married Peter Bradley, her boyfriend of a year and a half, in the fall of 2014. Marriage was not a milestone that she had previously spent much time considering, but she knew the prospect of planning her wedding might help her mom hang on a little longer. \u201cIt felt like we\u2019d thrown open a shade and the room was filled with new light,\u201d she writes. Her mother passed away just two weeks after the wedding.<\/p>\n

In the ensuing months, Zauner felt like she needed to flip a switch on her life. \u201cI was 25 and my mom had just died, it was time for me to get a job,\u201d she says. \u201cI tried to be a musician for seven years and I\u2019d given it my all, but no one was really interested or it wasn\u2019t enough.\u201d So, with her new husband by her side, she moved to Brooklyn and got a job at an advertising company that sold mural space. In her free time, she put the finishing touches on a collection of dream-pop songs she recorded in the fragile, disorienting days after her mother\u2019s death. She called it Psychopomp<\/em>, after the mythological beings that escort the deceased to the afterlife.<\/p>\n

Loss is a constant presence on the album, from the cover photo of Zauner\u2019s mom and an old friend to songs like \u201cIn Heaven<\/a>,\u201d which grapples with a conflicted desire to believe in something beyond our earthly existence. Grief became the theme of nearly every interview during the initial rise of Japanese Breakfast. Zauner didn\u2019t mind that much, she says; sharing her story felt weirdly therapeutic, and besides, she\u2019s a self-proclaimed open book, sometimes to a fault. The enduring image from the Psychopomp<\/em> era can be found in the video<\/a> for \u201cEverybody Wants to Love You,\u201d in which Zauner shotguns a beer, rides a motorcycle, and rips a guitar solo atop a semi-truck, all while wearing her late mother\u2019s hanbok.<\/p>\n

One year later, Japanese Breakfast shared Soft Sounds From Another Planet<\/em>. Again, the record explored trauma and detachment, this time through the loose concept of space and science fiction. While Zauner had been intimately involved in conceptualizing and directing the videos around Psychopomp<\/em>, Soft Sounds\u2019<\/em> elaborate visuals\u2014which involve demons<\/a>, rocket fuel-infused hallucinations<\/a>, and cinematic school dances<\/a>\u2014also marked the moment Zauner came into her own as a music video director. She has since helmed kooky clips for Better Oblivion Community Center<\/a> and Charly Bliss<\/a>, adding to an ever-growing resum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

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