Michelle Zauner is the name behind 2016’s ambient-pop outfit Japanese Breakfast. The solo-project of the former Little Big League musician who sought a life outside of Eugene, Oregon was shortly halted following the diagnosis of her mothers aggressive cancer. After returning back to Eugene to care for her mother and family, Japanese Breakfast was born. After Michelle recruited some old friends from the area, people she claimed were the only musicians in the area, her debut album Psychopomp was born.

Released via Dead Ocean in November 2016, Psychopomp is the sound of an artist with a penchant for lustful melodies and smouldering guitar sounds. Woozy guitar plays into the vein of Frankie Cosmos, The Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen, these are all the sounds that ring throughout her sound and ultimately make her debut the masterpiece it truly is. Wrapped within heartbreaking stories of sadness, Psychopomp really is one of the finest pieces of 2016. I managed to chat with Michelle late last year to pull together some of her influences and unmask some of the stories behind the music.

Hi Michelle, can you tell us a little about Japanese Breakfast, how does the project differ from Little Big League for you?
Japanese Breakfast is my first solo effort. I'm able to guide the project and interact with different collaborators to accomplish the sound I want, whereas Little Big League was a band I had with my friends in Philadelphia that was largely collaborative within that set group.

The musical influences certainly seem different why is this?
I think it had a lot to do with this being my first solo endeavour and working with different collaborators to arrange and produce the material. Little Big League was definitely influenced more by punk and hardcore, largely due to my collaborators, and while I liked the energy that took on I wouldn't say it was an inspiration that came naturally to me. These influences were a lot more of what I grew up with, and maybe part of it was working back in my old home environment in Oregon vs. Philadelphia.

There are a lot of personal themes that cut into your debut album, can you tell us a little more about them please?
Well, my mom passed away a few months before I started work on the album. I was stuck in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon and had to leave a lot of stuff behind in Philadelphia, where I was living before. I think a major theme was trying to find something to believe in. The idea of communicating to my mother in dreams, and just the struggle of what to do in her absence and how to move forward. There's a lot about moving physical belongings and trying to clean up a house.

Can you tell us about your upbringing and how that plays into Japanese Breakfast?
I was raised in the Pacific Northwest, in a house in the woods. I was an only child. I had a very happy but somewhat lonely childhood. I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with people my age outside of school. I was always very busy with my work and my imagination. I think some of the way that might sound may come through on the record.

What is the story behind the album title, Psychopomp?
I was seeing a Jungian analyst at the time and reading a book of Carl Jung's and the word popped up. I thought it looked like "psychotic pop" and really enjoyed it. When I looked up the definition I read it was a creature that guides spirits to the afterlife without any kind of judgement. I felt like over the course of my mother's illness, that was sort of the role I had to adopt to support her, so it resonated with me.

There seems to be a lot of environmental sounds within the album, a lot of moods and textures – is this something you felt when writing it?
Not necessarily. I had a lot of space with this record and no real expectation. I arranged it with friends pretty traditionally, and then sat on it for a month wanting to do more. When I recruited Ned Eisenberg to co produce and mix that was sort of when a lot more experimental and maybe environmental sounds started getting added. I think this was the first record that had no real deadline and the first time I felt like I could just unabashedly go after the sounds I wanted without having to negotiate with anyone on the vision.

How have you found your time in Europe and how does it differ to the US?
Well it's definitely more of a whimsical experience. For one thing you are traveling from country to country vs. state to state, so it feels way crazier to wake up in a new spot everyday. It's exciting to meet more people, and learn about the culture in a very unique way of getting to work with the people vs. being just a normal tourist. The rest stops are much, much nicer. We eat a lot better in Europe!

With the current US political environment, do you find your music acts as part of the conversation or release?
I think for some people, I represent something that they haven't had access to before. I think that's really amazing and important. I want to do more, to use my small platform for good, to speak out against what is unjust. I feel like I especially owe this because of the space that has been made for me in this music world by people who continue to fight for what is right. 

You had quite a rigorous and hardworking process when writing Psychopomp – can you explain more about this?
Well, I really thought Psychopomp was going to be my last album in a lot of ways. There was no pressure because no one was waiting for it, or even really curious about it. I really just made it for me, to help me grieve and communicate. I just kind of wandered about with it, exploring any avenue I wanted because there were no real stakes. I wrote it in Eugene two months after my mom passed away, revisiting a lot of old material I thought was good and never went anywhere. I asked Peter Bradley to play bass, Nick Hawley-Gamer to play guitar and Colin Redmond to play drums and engineer. They might have been like, only three people I knew in Eugene that played music. Nick and Peter especially know me very well and are moved by similar things, so I think that helped create something really special. Ned Eisenberg was a friend from college whose production work I loved, and I sat with him almost everyday for maybe a month or two in Crown Heights just mixing and adding and reworking things together to make what we wound up with.

Do you have a stand out track on the album that you particularly enjoyed writing or recording?
‘In Heaven’ was a special one because I think it took the most time. I was really unhappy with it after we had recorded it, things weren't sitting right and it was really missing something. That was the first song Ned and I reworked together that got me really excited about the mixing process.

There are a lot of interesting samples and sounds on the album, how come?
Well, a lot of that has to do with the way that Ned works. Ned really opened up that world to me and made me feel like anything was possible. If I said I wanted a screaming hawk-type sound on the pre-chorus to help lift it into the chorus, thinking he would mess with the EQ or effects of some guitar to help accomplish that, he'd literally just swipe a free sample online or from a YouTube video to get that effect. Or lighting, or remember that crazy fuzzed out synth line in that anime we both watched as kids? He'd just cut it in. Then I knew of course I wanted to use a voice recording of my mother, and there was just never anyone to say no. Everyone I worked with really encouraged me to just go ham with whatever I wanted to do.

How do you find Oregon as a place to live and as a music scene?
Oregon was the beautiful place of my childhood, and it was an amazing place to grow up. After my experiences the last three years, it feels very haunted and I honestly hate being there. I feel juvenile and sad. I could never live there again, but it has everything to do with my personal experiences. I don't know much about the music scene there anymore, but I have some very talented friends in a band called Le Rev in Eugene (Nick and Colin who helped put the record together new band), And And And are a Portland band (Nate and Berg co-wrote an album with me as ‘Birthday Girlz’ where Everybody Wants to Love You first appeared) I love, and so are The Domestics.

Website: michellezauner.bandcamp.com
Facebook: facebook.com/japanesebreakfast
Twitter: twitter.com/Jbrekkie