The Japanese House Releases Her New Single/Video "Sunshine Baby", Featuring The 1975's Matty Healy
The Japanese House (the acclaimed project of Amber Bain) has released new single “Sunshine Baby” from forthcoming album In The End It Always Does featuring vocals from The 1975’s Matty Healy. The track also received a first play on BBC Radio 1’s Future Sounds with Clara Amfo.
Bain’s latest single “Sunshine Baby” comes to us alongside a beautiful live video directed by Sheila Johansson. Co-produced by Bain with The 1975’s George Daniel and Chloe Kraemer, “Sunshine Baby” is the perfect melancholic dream-pop inspired track for aimlessly driving around and processing emotions. Showcasing Bain’s nuanced understanding of human emotions, the track balances feelings of nostalgia and acceptance once a relationship has run its course perfectly encapsulating the album’s cyclical nature with Matty Healy’s vocals echoing Amber’s as the track slowly brings you back to reality.
“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,” Says Bain.
Late last month, Bain released “Sad To Breathe” and announced her highly anticipated sophomore album In the End It Always Does out Friday, June 30 on Dirty Hit. The upbeat summer anthem for the brokenhearted followed lead single “Boyhood” which sees Bain explore the complexities of gender and sexuality as well as how trauma becomes an inescapable part of a person.
Inspired by a throuple that Amber found herself in during the pandemic and the subsequent slow dissolution of those relationships, In The End It Always Does consists of songs that are each a snapshot in time from that point in her life when everything was falling apart. The music encompasses heartbreak and love lost, with brighter moments and emotional reflections on childhood trauma and identity, all woven into a tapestry of gorgeous, elevated pop music. This album sees Amber lean even further into the pop realm with help from Matty Healy and George Daniel (The 1975), Katie Gavin (MUNA) and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon among others. Amber credits Katie Gavin especially with injecting her with creative energy and inspiration throughout. The album was produced and engineered by Chloe Kraemer (Rex Orange County, Lava La Rue, Glass Animals), an experience Amber describes as “life changing” due to the unspoken, shared understanding between marginalised genders in a creative space.
In The End It Always Does follows The Japanese House’s lauded 2020 EP Chewing Cotton Wool, which featured the illustrious “Dionne” ft. Grammy-award winning songwriter Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver), as well as her critically acclaimed debut album Good At Falling (2019). She’s an alternative pop star for the modern age who is serving up vulnerable lyrics and down to earth, celestial songs that offer a reflection on love, loss, and personal identity. Her intimate, unique sound has propelled her to over 350 million streams on Spotify and garnered her major media praise from New York Times, W Magazine, Playboy, GQ, Nylon, The Fader, Pitchfork, Noisey, i-D, WWD and more.