Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner has spent the last year living in Korea, and in a recent interview with GQ Korea (Zauner's first print interview in her mother's native tongue), she revealed a bit of what she's been up to since the move, including some teasers about the upcoming fourth Japanese Breakfast album.
Most of the interview is spent talking about how Zauner's been learning Korean in order to better communicate with her aunt and share memories of her late mother, as well as read her mom's old diary (she also slips in that she'd like to become a mother herself in the next year).
The most exciting bit of the interview is when Zauner touches on what sounds like an already-finished follow-up to 2021's Jubilee that'll apparently be released this coming March. She describes the new record as "gloomy" and guitar-heavy, calling it "a little bit more mature."
Here's how she describes it:
The third album was about happiness. And I used a lot of instruments. There were a lot of horns and string instruments. So when I performed for that album, I didn't play the guitar much. I just sang. So I missed the guitar a lot. I play a lot of guitar for this album. And it's a gloomy album…
I got tired of happy topics. Hahahahaha. So I went back to gloomy topics. I think it's a little more mature. The third album used a lot of yellow and bright colours, but I got tired of that style, so this album will probably have different colours. I always want to make it different from the last album. And I think a lot about my age these days.
See Zauner's Instagram post about the interview below.