Levitation Reviews: Japanese Breakfast @ Stubbs (10/31)

Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner can’t be stopped. Along with crafting JapaneseBreakfast’s brilliant third album Jubilee, she has somehow found time to score a video game and publish a memoir that became a New York Times Bestseller. So it was no surprise to hear that a morning bus fire was not enough to stop her from getting to Stubbs in time to send Levitation Fest off in style on Halloween. Hit the jump for more thoughts and photos.

Putting spooky Halloween omens aside, she came onto the stage to the theme music of the popular Korean drama Squid Game, surrounded by the series’ iconic masked soldiers. She herself was dressed as a giant robot girl from the series, who orchestrates a deadly game of Red Light, Green Light. A fitting costume really, as the crowd hung on to her every word, and responded to her every call.

With the bang of a gong, Zauner launched into a set laden with the joyful pop-adjacent songs that make up Jubilee. Zauner’s take on pop is drenched with sweeping synths and crunchy guitar tones, and the live set highlighted both the fun, dance-inducing character of the album along with its sonic depth and diversity (a live saxophone certainly didn’t hurt in that regard). After dedicating many of her projects to ideas of grief and loss (see Crying in H Mart and Psychopomp), Zauner made it clear that Jubilee was meant to be an expression of joy, and the live show was no different.

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