Sunday, June 12, 2022
Japanese Breakfast (Dead Oceans)
From the moment she began writing the album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.
Jubilee is an album about processing life and love in the quest for happiness, and how that process sometimes requires us to step outside of ourselves. Throughout Jubilee, Zauner is hardly fictionalizing her lyrics, instead of pouring her own life into the universe of each song to tell real stories, and allowing those universes, in turn, to fill in the details. Joy, change, evolution—these things take real-time, and real effort. And Japanese Breakfast is here for it.
Soccer Mommy (Loma Vista Recordings)
For Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, color theory is a distillation of hard-won catharsis. The album confronts the ongoing mental health and familial trials that have plagued the artist since pre-pubescence, presenting listeners with an uncompromisingly honest self-portrait, and reminding us exactly why her critically-acclaimed debut, 2018’s Clean, made her a hero to many. Wise beyond her years, Allison is a songwriter capable of capturing the fleeting moments of bliss that make an embattled existence temporarily beautiful. With color theory, Allison’s fraught past becomes a lens through which we might begin to understand what it means to be resilient.
Clean demonstrated Allison’s nuanced approach to lyricism and her disinterest in reducing complex emotional worlds into easily-digestible sound bites. On it, she projected the image of a confused but exceedingly mature teenager — the type to offer up life-saving advice while cutting class under the bleachers. The melodies on color theory shimmer on the surface, but they reveal unsettling darkness with each progressive listen.
Del Water Gap (Mom+Pop Records)
Del Water Gap is the solo project of songwriter and producer S. Holden Jaffe. He has already amassed a cult-like following with more than 52 million streams worldwide and a slew of collaborations all before a debut album. In 2020 he collaborated with Claud on their track “My Body”. His newest singles “Sorry I Am” and “Hurting Kind” have been well received by fans & media alike. “Sorry I Am” is a deeply confessional track, accompanied by an alluring music video filmed in a picturesque desert in Joshua Tree directed by Angela Ricciardi. This single follows his breakout 2020 track “Ode To A Conversation Stuck In Your Throat,” which racked up over 8.5 million streams on Spotify alone.
De’Wayne (Hopeless Records)
An artist who has taken risks his whole life is now putting that exact energy into the music he creates. De’Wayne is an alternative singer and rapper from Houston, Texas, who is redefining Black music today by showcasing a raw blend of genres. The music combines elements of rock, industrial, and rap with a mission to show people we shouldn’t live in boxes and neither should their music. In 2017, De’Wayne released his first EP Don’t Be Afraid, which got acclaim across various media outlets. Later that year, De’Wayne joined Jessie J & Chase Atlantic as direct support on their respective European and US tours. In 2018 De’Wayne released two singles, “Adios” featuring Chase Atlantic and “Top Man”. He was also featured as a writer and vocalist on Masego’s new album Lady Lady on the track “Just A Little“. Later in 2018, De’Wayne joined Waterparks, Set It Off and I Don’t Know How But They Found Me on US tours, completing over 50 dates in total.
The Brummies (The Brummies)
When Nashville trio The Brummies released their debut album Eternal Reach in 2018, they pulled off the rare feat of creating something timeless. With its blend of urgent rock & roll, dreamy indie-folk, and piercing songwriting, the LP could just have easily been recorded in the 60s or 90s as in the last decade. Almost three years later, the group continues to defy the elastic boundaries of time on their new album Automatic World. It’s a record built around the theme of déjà vu — but the songs contained therein are like nothing you’ve heard before. Produced by the Brummies along with Jarrad Kritzstein (Ruston Kelly) and Austin Jenkins (Leon Bridges), Automatic World exists in those atmospheric notes that seem to soundtrack our subconscious. There are rhythmic guitar riffs straight out of the 70s, hypnotic Moog passages that evoke the electronica of Giorgio Moroder, and even the bright tones of soul music. In “After Midnight,” the Brummies — originally from Birmingham, Alabama, their name is U.K. slang for a resident of Birmingham — revel in what they call “dark disco.”
Kaien Cruz (Kaien Cruz)
Kaien Cruz is a pop singer and songwriter from the Eastern coast of South Africa. Their career jump-started after recording their first single ever “Love Me In The Dark” with Sketchy Bongo, quickly rising into the top charts and getting nominated for Song of the Year at the South African Music Awards. Rushing into the spotlight, Kaien had their debut performance opening for Justin Bieber’s Purpose Tour. Inspired and determined, they found their way to Los Angeles, where they have since found management with CAA and independently released their long-awaited EP Demos For Ransom. Since the release, Kaien has soared back into the limelight, performing in some of the world’s most celebrated venues in their first-ever North American Tour. Being sought out by every major label, Kaien Cruz is simultaneously championing for artists to retain creative control by utilizing all of the tools Web3 & the dynamic crypto space have to offer. Cruz hopes to uplift, encourage & elevate a more forward-thinking, mixed generation in music, entertainment & tech.
