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Michelle Zauner embraces the spotlight and goes for the brass ring on her third album, a stylish and eclectic record that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities.

This spring, somewhere between her memoir Crying in H Mart debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times’ Best Sellers list and her turn as a vampiric sugar baby to an ex-Soprano in a self-directed video, it officially became Jbrekkie Season. Michelle Zauner, the musician, author, director, and food enthusiast behind Japanese Breakfast, had seemingly planned it that way, holding her ambitious third record—and first in four years—until the pandemic eased. As she declared in press releases and interviews, Jubilee would be a celebration of joy after years of feeling defined by her writing about grief, following the loss of her mother to cancer in 2014.

This jubilee, like many others, comes with an air of regality: triumphant horns and swooping strings fill the music like a lush 2000s chamber pop record. But no album about joy would be complete without a few killer pop songs, from the sexy-in-slow-motion “Posing in Bondage” to “Be Sweet,” which is frankly begging for an ’80s montage scene to soundtrack. Some have positioned Taylor Swift’s folklore as the great nexus of pop music and indie culture, but an album like Jubilee is a more interesting example of pop’s fluidity: a true blue rock star tempered in the waters of shoegaze, Pacific Northwest rock, and twee, making music that naturally bridges the gap between dream pop and electropop. It’s an exuberant listen that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities, packed with Zauner’s sharp observations and frank desires. – Pitchfork