Amber Bain, who is The Japanese House, released four EPs in the period 2015 – 2017, a period which helped her develop and refine a clear artistic vision. Much of the time has been spent touring with The 1975 and Wolf Alice, although Amber admits she doesn’t commit easily and is not a finisher.
She seems pleased that her debut album** has a lot of her in it, drawn from a particularly dynamic and tumultuous time in her life. ‘Lilo’ was written at the onset of a new relationship and ‘We Talk All The Time’ as it was changing; with Follow My Girl expressing the heartbreak of the falling apart.
Amber’s songs are deeply personal, with ‘You Seemed So Happy’ written after the unexpected death of a friend and the onset of Amber’s anxiety about her own mortality. Then there is Marika Is Sleeping, the orchestral music for which she dreamed – literally – in her sleep. She woke up in her hotel bedroom, hastily programmed all the strings and put it through a Mellotron in about two minutes, before writing the lyrics.
“The songs are more upbeat than the ones on the EPs,” says Bain. “That’s inspired by playing live. When I wrote the EPs, in my head, I thought, this will be crazy, people will go wild. And it’s actually so different live. In your head, something can sound like a club anthem and then live, it ends up as some down, slow, sad thing. I also really like playing bass, so more is inspired by fun basslines, which means fun drum parts. I do it that way around – fitting the drums to the bass, rather than the bass to the drums. I’m not as happy as the music I make,” she laughs. “Maybe there’s a sense of irony in it. I’m singing about all these really depressing things, but if you don’t listen to the lyrics, it sounds really poppy. Also, I just really like major-key pop songs. I like the little nuances, the key changes, that’s what I like to listen to.”
Good at Falling may have taken years to come to fruition, but it is considered to be worth the wait. “Falling can mean so much: falling in love with someone, or falling flat on your face, feeling like your life is being destroyed, falling out of love with someone. I always find myself doing that, and being in those things. All the songs are about some sort of fall or failure or vulnerability. I wanted to be good at channelling that into something.”
**Good At Falling, The Japanese House’s debut album, will be released on 1 March 2019 You can listen to a second new track from the album, Follow My Girl, here.
WEBSITE http://thejapanesehouse.co.uk/
FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/Japanesehouse/
TWITTER https://twitter.com/Japanesehouse
INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/thejapanesehouse/?hl=en
Feature image provided by Ian Cheek.
