PHOTO CREDIT: JAY SEBA
SUNSHINE BABY
IN THE END IT ALWAYS DOES LP // 30 JUNE
ANNOUNCES UK TOUR // OCTOBER
THE JAPANESE HOUSE has shared new single SUNSHINE BABY, the third offering from her forthcoming second studio album, IN THE END IT ALWAYS DOES, out 30 June via Dirty Hit. Co-produced by Amber Bain with The 1975’s George Daniel and Chloe Kraemer, and featuring vocals from The 1975’s 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 and a video directed by Sheila Johansson.
Amber explains: “Sunshine Baby is my nickname for my dog, and my ex and I always 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.”
To coincide with the release The Japanese House also announce a headline tour of the UK in October and fans can preorder In The End It Always Does for exclusive presale access, with general sale taking place on FRIDAY 19 MAY. She also supports The 1975 at London Finsbury Park on Sunday 2 July.
OCTOBER
Thu 12 GLASGOW SWG3
Sat 14 NEWCASTLE University
Sun 15 MANCHESTER New Century
Mon 16 NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
Wed 18 BRISTOL Trinity Centre
Thu 19 OXFORD O2 Academy
Fri 20 SOUTHAMPTON 1865
Sun 22 BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy
Mon 23 LONDON Outernet
Tue 24 BRIGHTON Chalk
Pre-order / pre-save In the End It Always Does
It’s been nearly a decade since Amber Bain’s breakout in 2015 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.
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, IN THE END IT ALWAYS DOES 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 we all fell in love at the same time – and then one of them left,” Bain recalls. “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.
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 marginalized 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.”
IN THE END IT ALWAYS DOES TRACK LISTING:
- Touching Yourself
- Sad to Breathe
- Over There
- Morning Pages
- Boyhood
- Indexical reminder of a morning well spent
- Friends
- Sunshine Baby
- Baby goes Again
- You always get what you want
- One for sorrow, two for Joni Jones
THE JAPANESE HOUSE is the acclaimed project of Amber Bain, who has released music under the pseudonym since 2015 and shared her debut album, Good At Falling, in 2019. Since her emergence in 2015, she has received industry-wide acclaim from The Guardian (“it feels like a refreshing splash of cold water on tear-stained cheeks”) Sunday Times Culture (“stunning”) Pitchfork, i-D, VICE, NME, GQ, Interview Magazine, BBC Radio One and many more.
