soft sounds from another planet
Soft Sounds From Another Planet by Japanese Breakfast soundtracked my life for a time. In a way, it still does. It came out when I was in seventh grade, which being nearly eight years ago now makes me... older. The dreamy distortion, the feel-it-in-your-guts guitar, and Michelle Zauner's angelic, authentic voice all came together to feed my thirteen-year-old self something I'd never tasted. In my preteen angst, I clung to the saddest songs on the album desperately. I wanted "Boyish" to claw at my heart, for "Til Death" to find the nameless pain I was feeling and for "The Body Is a Blade" rip it from me. They couldn't do that for me, but they did enough.
Though I didn't know then that the album dealt largely with loss in different forms, namely Zauner's loss of her mother to cancer (see "The Body Is a Blade"), the album inflicted a pain on me (and gave voice to a pain I had been feeling) I felt I understood in its entirety. I was in middle school, though, so I didn't understand. I couldn't understand. But even with my limited understanding, the album and I shared a pain in common.
These days, I circle back to the album every now and then. Seven years ago, the album reigned over my life, but these days it comes in waves to wash over me with reminders of change. Those of us who cling to albums like they are life themselves know that every few years, you'll find meaning in songs you previously didn't care for, or discover a song you've listened to for years seems tailor-made for you in a certain moment or era of your life. They carried me through periods of great loss, happiness, and feeling. Despite how I was changing, they fit into every box I ever shoehorned myself into, and I find now more than I did at thirteen that they mean something new with every listen.
Simultaneously, there are songs I don't necessarily want to lug with me through life. "Til Death" once meant the world to me, but it now signifies a world to which I don't wish to return. "This House" never blew my mind back then, but I find it speaks to me now. Change is imminent and good.
I feel the love, joy, and passion in the album more easily than I find the sadness these days. I still feel the pain deeply, I feel it for my younger self and for the loss that incited Zauner to write and the loss I've felt myself since, but I know that is just one of the many layers that comprise Soft Sounds From Another Planet. There are feelings yet to feel, sounds yet to strike my ears, meaning yet to find.
ʚ ═══･୨ ꕤ ୧･═══ ɞ