If you could change everything about yourself while still remaining you, would you do it? Because this is what The Japanese House’s Amber Bain has done. After a four-year hiatus, preceded by the release of her first studio album Good at Falling, Bain has come back with a revisited sound and personality, perfectly visible in the first single, titled ‘Boyhood’, off the upcoming second LP In The End It Always Does, due to come out on 30 June 2023.
Compared to the debut, this second album shows incredible growth and self-awareness, through its experiments on sounds like the ones in the first, enthralling and absolutely gorgeous opener ‘Spot Dog’. Via an acoustic guitar loop and The 1975’s drummer George Daniel’s production magic, Bain creates a newfound dimension in her portfolio, one of improvisation and shimmer, with autotuned mumbles and hard-hitting electronic percussions. “I don’t wanna go yet…” she sings between a synth and the other and, even though I am not easily impressed, I have to say that this is probably one of the best openers, in all its cinematic persona accompanied by romantic yet melancholic violins.
Every single song on In The End It Always Does has a different weight, exploring new storytelling techniques and what feels like a newfound authenticity. There is a clear yet invisible string of memories about Bain’s personal struggles and romantic relationships, via witty lyrics like in the second track ‘Touching Yourself’, when she sings “I know I shouldn’t say it but I had to mention: it makes me wanna die every time I have to picture your face.” The contrasts between upbeat and sunny atmospheres and more introspective and softer ones seem to be a recurring theme in this album, and Bain does it so elegantly.
‘Sad to Breathe’, an ethereal ballad constellated by autotuned and reverberated vocals, is the perfect example of this contrast. While it starts as a piano track, it continues on a more lighthearted journey, characterised by bubbly drums and far-away guitar strings. “I wrote ‘Sad to Breathe’ some time ago, it’s one of the oldest songs on the record,” Bain said, “It was very different back then; it’s gone from being solely electronic to what it is now, mostly live/acoustic instrumentation.
“It’s about that desperate feeling when someone leaves you and the disbelief that they could. It’s funny you could have those kinds of insane dramatic thoughts, that feel so real at the time, but can by some miracle look back in fondness at your entire life being ruined. It all circles back around.”
‘Over There’ is a timeless track, featuring the clearest vocals on the whole album, outlining an ended relationship and Bain’s pain in seeing the other person with someone else entirely. With 80s-inspired shimmers and keyboards, it is one of the highest points on the whole record. “It’s almost like I reached you, it’s like I almost reached you,” Bain sings, followed by a heartwarming string opening and bridge with whispered lyrics. Production-wise, the only way I can describe this song is incredible. Daniel and Chloe Kraemer’s skills have done a fantastic job.
Collaborations with other artists like MUNA on ‘Morning Pages’ and Matty Healy on ‘Sunshine Baby’ enrich the material, rendering it more whole, almost like finding new puzzle pieces to embellish the final outcome. And it is tracks like these that are most memorable, especially the latter.
‘Sunshine Baby’, one of the chosen singles, is the perfect representation of Bain and The Japanese House’s personality. With catchy choruses singing “I don’t know what’s right anymore, I don’t wanna fight anymore,” the song enthrals the listener with lyricism resembling a diary entry. Reprising the album’s title, Healy’s back-looped vocals take over and fill the empty space delicately. The two singers compliment each other, maybe for their complicity, but it is definitely an ace up Bain’s sleeve that makes the whole thing more wholesome and personal.
My heart hurts while listening to the seventh track, ‘Indexical Reminder of a Morning Well Spent’, because it feels like an emotional break on a spring day, with warm and hugging vocals from Amber and simple yet compelling instrumentals.
Without getting lost in her reflection, Bain keeps going strong on another pivotal acoustic moment of the album, ‘Baby Goes Again’. “She’s all that I live on ‘cause I ran out of everything else,” she sings in the first line. In a sapphic and vulnerable declaration of love, Bain tells her listeners how she analysed the routine that has changed because of a person, how she counts the minutes it takes her to reach their house and how “Somehow it feels different when my baby goes again.” A muffled trumpet synth, similar to Bon Iver’s Messina, leads the listener by the hand to the end of the song, entering yet another gem: ‘You Always Get What You Want’.
I am aware there are a lot of pivotal moments. I am aware it seems repetitive and you must be thinking: “An album cannot be THIS good, can it?” Well, it can and it is. The Japanese House unlocked a delicacy, an elegance, a maturity that was still unexplored. It is different but the same, older fans will see the resemblance to her older works and cherish it, there is not a corner of her that remains hidden. Especially with the last track, an ode to Amber’s sausage dog Joni (named after Joni Mitchell).
Bain told DYI: “This is my favourite song, and I wrote it as a piece ages ago when I was playing the piano and Chloe (the producer) would record me playing the piano loads with my dog on my lap […] I’m trying to encapsulate that feeling, a sort of ode to that feeling when Emma Thompson stands there and cries while she’s holding the CD in Love Actually. The lyrics are about the confirmation that my relationship was dead, and it’s the only song I’ve ever cried during the vocal take, which has never happened before.”
Crying is a natural reaction to sadness, but also to beauty. How can one not cry when hearing the lyrics “No one’s ever gonna love me like this dog lying in my lap? No one has ever made me feel so stable, no one has been able to…” Beauty encapsulates this song and this album in general, which is a hymn to feelings, to love, but also to a lot of pain. We should feel lucky to be let into such a private dimension of Bain’s life. So, thank you, Amber.
When I first listened to In The End It Always Does, I’ll be honest, I was not fully convinced. I thought that The Japanese House was stuck in the past. Not branching out, not finding new sounds, staying in the comfort zone they so well inhabited for the debut album and previous EPs. However, upon a second, third, fourth and maybe fifth listen I only now realise what a great album this is, and what great courage writing it must have taken.
So, would you? Change everything about yourself while still remaining you?
Words by Silvia Pellegrino
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