Terrible News
I was properly introduced to Japanese Breakfast when I saw them open for Slowdive in 2017. The venue left the house music on for half the set and Michelle Zauner wore some fucked up sneakers. She talked about the markets in Montreal that she liked, and the anxiety dreams she was having opening for the juggernaut comeback of the shoegaze legends.
I just knew “Everybody Wants to Love You” and I was surprised that a band that I’d describe as “Stereogum Heartland Rock” had the gall to throw some wild autotune on a tune about “Road Head.” Soft Sounds From Another Planet came out a couple months later and it’s still getting better and better every time I turn it on. Their new album Jubilee is a masterclass in condensing the experiments of LP2 into the forms of LP1 to create blissfully shiny pop tunes that soar like all hell.
I know this is supposed to be the joy album but I’m unfortunately always going to associate it with the death of one of the most influential people in my life, which I learned about while listening to it last week. Joni Sadler was the music director of CKUT through 3.5 years of my college experience and she passed away out of nowhere at the age of 35 to a brain aneurism. It feels impossible that his could be true. I stared at the news numb for a while just completely lost. I guess I wasn’t really “listening” to the new Japanese Breakfast album so much as letting it finish.
Joni’s influence on my life is impossible to overstate. She booked my first interview and most of my radio show slots. She edited some of my early reviews and got me festival passes—she showed me what independent music could really mean and how I could report on it. I was at that Slowdive gig because I interviewed Rachel Goswell for a local publication and got comp tickets.
Last Thursday was basically a Joni day for me. Joni was a workaholic with an inhuman drive to put things together, discover new music, and help people. That’s why dozens of people are sharing stories on social media about her. I don’t really believe that I’m an influence on others the way Joni is, but the reason I’m like this is Joni.
Why was I listening to the brand-new Japanese Breakfast album a day before it came out? Why did I run 10 kilometers as soon as I got home from working seven hours for the department of health’s contact tracing unit? Why’d I post my weekly newsletter that morning 8am with a link to the archive of my weekly radio show from Saturday? Cause that’s the type of shit Joni did. Joni was everywhere. She was telling you “good set dude” after you hosted a show at 5 in the morning. She was running to the front of the stage at Casa Del Popolo with a pint as the headliners came out (which meant the show was going to be good). That is, if she wasn’t working the door (or in the opening act).
Maybe one day I could be an influence like her. I’d love to be that radio elder who goes “oh yeah that album’s rad” when some 19-year-old who just discovered the sensation of hearing “Midnight in a Perfect World” stoned tells me how much he loves Endtroducing. I like to imagine that when I go, someone out there can put together an hour-long playlist of specific songs he remembers hearing at specific moments because I turned them on. They’re still digging into the crates because I told him This Heat was a good band 4 years ago.
Would Joni have liked Jubilee? It’s a little hard to say. The last Jbrekkie album made it into the library’s collection, but I think that might’ve been a little more the influence of our librarian at the time who was in a dream pop band. I think this album is going to be a major college radio hit. There’s a lot of Zauner to look into out there. It’s illuminating to listen to Psychopomp after reading her memoir Crying in H Mart, which chronicles the beginning of her career and showcases how intertwined it is with the loss of her mother. At the end of the day though, we’re dancing the pain away with her perfect melodic sense and cascading horns.
That’s the shit that 20-year-olds can glom onto—music that validates their pain without really making them feel it. Or at least that’s the music they can play on the radio. Speaking from experience, the emotional nakedness of Julien Baker’s music, though immensely important to me at 20, felt extremely weird to play on the air in broad daylight. “Slide Tackle” would’ve ruled though.
If Joni was still at CKUT there might’ve been a groundswell of kids loving this album around her and she would’ve been supporting them however she could. Years later, that'd be more important than the songs.
-Donovan Burtan