The Japanese House have shared new single Sunshine Baby, the third offering from the record from sophomore studio album In the End It Always Does, which drops 30th June via Dirty Hit. Co-produced by The Japanese House’s Amber Bain with label-mates The 1975’s George Daniel and Chloe Kraemer, and featuring vocals from the group’s frontman Matty Healy, Sunshine Baby is a soaring, nostalgic acceptance of the transience and ending of relationships. The track comes accompanied by an atmospheric alternative version of the track directed by Sheila Johansson.
The Japanese House @ Dingwalls
Bain explains: “Sunshine Baby is my nickname for my dog, and my ex and I alway used to lay on the beach together being sunshine babies. The chorus is kind of a submission to the end of our relationship, but singing it in a positive light. There’s a transience in every part of a relationship, and in the circle of everything it comes back around.”
Check out the live video of Sunshine Baby below:
The Japanese House also announced a headline tour of the UK in October and Bain also supports The 1975 at their sold out Finsbury Park show in London on 2nd July, see below for full list of dates.
It’s been nearly a decade since Bain’s break-out in 2015, back when The Japanese House was a mysterious unidentified figure shrouded in mystery and reverb. These days though, Bain’s sound and style is characteristically wide open, her vulnerabilities, thoughts and innermost feelings stitched into a tapestry of gorgeous, elevated pop music.
The Japanese House @ Dingwalls
Featuring the singles Sad To Breathe and Boyhood, much of In the End It Always Does lives in the contradictory: beginnings and endings, obsession and mundanity, falling in love and falling apart.
Written during a creative burst at the end of 2021, the new record is primarily inspired by the events preceding it – including Bain’s first time moving to Margate, being in a throuple and the slow dissolution of those relationships. “[These two people] were together for six years and I met them and then we all fell in love at the same time – and then one of them left,” Bain’s remembers. “It was a ridiculously exciting start to a relationship. It was this high… And then suddenly I’m in this really domestic thing, and it’s not like there was other stuff going on – it was lockdown.” The album came together just as that chapter in her life was falling apart, with each song almost acting as a snapshot in time.
The Japanese House @ Dingwalls
Four years after her widely celebrated debut Good At Falling, this album sees Bain lean even further into the pop realm – with help from Matty Healy and George Daniel from The 1975, Katie Gavin from MUNA and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon among others. Bain credits Gavin especially with injecting her with creative energy and inspiration throughout.
The album also sees Bain work alongside producer and engineer Chloe Kraemer (Rex Orange County, Lava La Rue, Glass Animals), an experience she describes as “life changing” due to the unspoken, shared understanding between marginalised genders in a creative space. “I’d never worked with a woman or queer person [in that way] before,” Bain says. “It’s nice to have someone who completely understands your standpoint and shared experience. Also, I say ‘she’ in every song… so it’s important that someone understands that.
The Japanese House UK live dates 2023:
JULY
2nd – Finsbury Park, London – SOLD OUT w/ The 1975
OCTOBER
12th – SWG3, Glasgow
14th – Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
15th – New Century, Manchester
16th – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
18th – The Trinity Centre, Bristol
19th – O2 Academy Oxford, Oxford
20th – 1865, Southampton
22nd – O2 Academy Birmingham, Birmingham
23rd – Outernet, London
24th – CHALK, Brighton
Live photography of The Japanese House at Dingwalls by Kalpesh Patel
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