The Japanese House are releasing their second full-length, called In the End It Always Does on June 30. And this week they released their second single, Sad to Breathe, a track that opens with layers of piano and a synth on the far right. The song kicks in with a pop beat, punching yet smooth bass notes, guitar, and plenty of ear candy floating around.
Boyhood has a perfect indie pop tone of staccato synth notes forming the foundation. The vocal melody sticks in your head, and the fast acoustic picking hard panned to the outer edges fill the song out in a nice way. This album is very promising if you love indie synth pop.
Amber Bain is the genius behind indie pop The Japanese House. She first came on to the London scene in 2015 with the stunning Pools to Bathe In via Dirty Hit. At the time, I couldn’t get enough of Teeth and the way she mixed the vocals with a harmonizer, shifting her voice down an octave, and the tight harmonies that elevate the track. I was hooked, playing the song over and over. She was just nineteen when she made her debut EP. I recall sitting in my car, distraught by the song Still. Her songs have a way of destroying me.
Bain wrote on Instagram about the process of creating In the End It Always Does.
Was such a pleasure to make it, with my friends, lots of them, popping in and out, in the sunshine, in the rain, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the night, hackney wick, always laughing, a million busaba takeaways, beers on the canal at 4, the little Italian restaurant, crying a lot in the mornings, walking round trying to think of the words, to put in the songs, to say in real life, coming back inside, the end of a chapter, hundreds of new ideas, joni jones, circling round, again and again, the circle is spinning so fast you can’t see it’s moving at all.
The Japanese House (Instagram)
The art on the album reflects this spinning circle mentioned in her post The hand drawn circle rotates clockwise.
(Click on the post title to listen tracks.)
