''Soft Sounds from Another Planet'' is the second studio album by American

indie pop Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and sub ...

band

Japanese Breakfast Japanese Breakfast is an indie pop band headed by Korean-American musician Michelle Zauner. Zauner started the band as a side project in 2013, when she was leading the Philadelphia-based emo group Little Big League. She has said that she named ...

. The album was released by

Dead Oceans Dead Oceans is an American independent record label formed in 2007 and based in Bloomington, Indiana, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Dead Oceans is part of Secretly Group, which also ...

on July 14, 2017.

Background

In 2016, Japanese Breakfast released the band's debut album, ''Psychopomp'', whose songs largely reflect lead singer Michelle Zauner's grief over her mother's death. ''Psychopomp'' received unexpected critical and commercial success, rejuvenating Zauner's efforts to make music a career. But she found herself "reliving traumatic memories" when giving interviews about the album, and said she began writing ''Soft Sounds from Another Planet'' to help leave her trauma behind.

Release and promotion

Singles

On May 4, 2017, Japanese Breakfast released the album's lead single, "Machinist" to positive reviews from critics. It debuted alongside a music video depicting a woman who dismantles her spaceship when she tries to build a body for her robot lover. The video was directed by Zauner and Adam Kolodny. A second single, "Boyish", was released on June 7, 2017, followed by its own video on February 13, 2018, which Zauner later described as her " magnum opus". A third and final single, "Road Head", was released on July 6, 2017, alongside another music video directed by Zauner, who drew inspiration from

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

film director Wong Kar-wai's film

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and television series

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Video game

To promote the album, Japanese Breakfast released a video game, "Japanese BreakQuest". Players guide "J-Brekkie", a character named for the band's

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handle, to gather a band and fight an alien invasion. It was developed by Zauner and video game developer Elaine Fath and features songs from the album as

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit Integer (computer science), integers or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet (computing), octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) arc ...

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

tracks by Peter Bradley.

Composition

''Soft Sounds from Another Planet'' has been described as an

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...

shoegaze Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volu ...

and

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to r ...

album. It primarily deals with themes of loss,

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

and perseverance.

Critical reception

''Soft Sounds from Another Planet'' received a weighted score of 83 out of 100 from review aggregate website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 20 reviews from music critics. Nathan Reese of '' Pitchfork'' wrote, "Inspired by the cosmos, Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner addresses life on Earth. Her voice shines over melancholic arrangements, evoking

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

as much as

." Tim Sendra of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

wrote, "Much slicker and less wonky (than '' Psychopomp''), the songs have a spacious, expansive sound that envelops the listener in warmth (even when the

synths A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...

get a little chilly.)" Brian Shultz of ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

'' said, "And while everything on Japanese Breakfast's proper sophomore effort isn't entirely fresh, and its structure is somewhat loose, there's a confidence and crispness to ''Soft Sounds'' that shows just how fully realized Zauner's formerly homemade experiments have become." ''

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...

''s Ian Gormely wrote, "In trying to put a wall between herself and her audience, she's opened a new, far more revealing side to her music and herself."

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from AllMusic. * David Bartler – saxophone * Asher Brooks – trumpet * Jorge Elbrecht – mixing * David Hartley – engineer * Craig Hendrix – engineer, producer * Michael Johnson – engineer * Heba Kadry – mastering * Craig Scheihing – photography * Todd Schied – engineer * Nathaniel David Utesch – design * Michelle Zauner – vocals, guitars, producer

Charts

References

{{Japanese Breakfast 2017 albums Dead Oceans albums Japanese Breakfast albums