Indie singer/songwriter Japanese Breakfast, a.k.a. Michelle Zauner updated her lo-fi 2017 B-Side “Posing in Bondage” and released it as the second single from their upcoming album Jubilee alongside a new music video. The record is set to come out in full on June 4 via Dead Oceans.
The song was given a cinematic makeover with ambient pads, bright arpeggios and pounding drums during the choruses and outro. Zauner sings about alienation and desire for connection through a story about waiting for her partner to come home while she was done up in bondage. She repeats, “Closeness/Proximity/I needed/Bondage.”
“‘Posing in Bondage’ is a ballad about loneliness and longing, a song about two people who want so badly to connect but are never quite able to do so,” Zauner confirms. “No place felt lonelier than an empty grocery at 1 AM. The video is actually an epilogue to the one that will accompany our next single, here presented out of order.”
In the video, Zauner seems to float into the empty grocery store while wearing a revealing black outfit and a lot of dried blood that supposedly dripped down her chin. She’s shown to be standing on a hoverboard as she continues hovering through the vacated store, drinking orange juice from the jug as the lights flicker. Another woman enters the store wearing a superhero-style costume as Zauner sings, “When the world divides into two people/Those who have felt pain/And those who have yet to.”
“Be Sweet,” the first single from Jubilee, debuted at the start of March with a less lonely, similarly late-night music video. Jubilee will be her third official record under the Japanese Breakfast name, following Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017).
Zauner also announced that those who appreciate her sadder side can find her new book Crying in H Mart available for pre-order through Knopf. It’s a book about her Korean-American heritage, the loss of her mother and how she found her own identity.
Photo credit: Kalyn Oyer
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