Psychopomp, Korean American Michelle Zauner’s 2016 debut as Japanese Breakfast, was an emotional response to her mother’s death from cancer. The follow-up finds the singer beginning the process of healing. The vast sonic palette perhaps mirrors the way that a devastating loss can heighten the senses. Fizzing electro, hazy shoegaze, funk basslines, electronica and even an 80s pop sax solo blend together into a bittersweet, happy-sad soundtrack.
“Where are you?” she cries at one point; “I never realised how much you were holding back,” at another. Although it’s mostly dreamlike and existential, the album soars with its shimmering pop songs. The title track’s plangent twangs have a hint of John Lennon’s transcendent #9 Dream. The Body Is a Blade could be a spacey Sundays. The acoustic, sultry This House features aching yearning of a more romantic kind. The towering Boyish could be an imaginary Phil Spector production of Lykke Li – big-lunged pop, but with a melancholy soul.
