In fact, no record in 2021 captured the growing pains of modern adulthood like their fifth album, which honed their tried-and-true formula just enough to keep us gripped. Luckily, the band refuses to drift into cruise control. The rearview mirror looms large reprieve comes like the occasional rest stop. For 13 years the Philly quintet have stared down that dusty, desolate highway, parting the tumbleweeds and teasing us with the prospect of a destination just beyond the horizon, but never fully delivering on their promise. In an era when battered, gritty guitar rock is all but dead, the War on Drugs remain a constant.
Throughout it all, Zauner - whose memoir Crying in H Mart also makes EW's Best of 2021 list - injects each tale a uniquely elegant lyricism she isn't singing as much as letting the words and wisdom spill out of her like an overflowing cup. The percussive strings and lulling surf-rock riff of "Kokomo, IN" sees her firmly in the emotional firing line - "These days I can't shake the awful feeling I'm missing something I can't place, is that you?/ Manifesting like the fear of an oven left on" - while "Savage Good Boy" serves as a biting commentary on our darkly comical haves-and-have-nots reality. "How's it feel to be at the center of magic/To linger in tones and words?" she sings on "Paprika," a ferris wheel of an opener about, among other things, the unique mysticism that comes with being an artist. The third album from Michelle Zauner's Japanese Breakfast is bursting with flavor - an exhilarating exposition on a life filled with love, loss, and (occasional) lucidity.
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