“Boyhood” by The Japanese House, Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Last month, The Japanese House released their long-anticipated follow-up album to 2019's Good at Falling. The solo project of Amber Mary Bain, The Japanese House collaborated with a number of musicians from Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and The 1975's Maty Healy and George Daniel to MUNA and Charli XCX on their latest project, In the End, It Always Does. The English singer-songwriter Amber Bain offers a hybrid between the acoustic and highly processed, like if Bon Iver recorded and produced Joni Mitchell. It's simple. It's zen. It's nice music for a rainy or slow humid summer day.

I'M STILL LOOKING OUT FOR ME. Before releasing In the End, It Always Does, The Japanese House released the lead single, "Boyhood." The instrumental direction of In the End, It Always Does feels less processed than The Japanese House's earlier work. Singer Amber Bain had talked about using The Japanese House to mask the person behind the music. I've written about many solo artists who take on a band's name. Some groups started as a band but eventually, all members drop out until one member is left, like in the case of Years & Years. Some artists use a band name to give the illusion of a band. Some genres respect band names more than solo acts. I think of Washed Out and Anchor & Braille as these artists. In this case, other musicians may join for a time, like the local musicians who joined Stephen Christian on his first two records with Anchor & Braille or how Ernest Greene's wife sometimes performs with the singer. Still, other solo acts take on a name to distance themselves from a potential "Fame Monster" they create. The Weeknd and Lady Gaga as well as Lana Del Rey feel like they were curated singers to have a life much bigger than the singer. These artists hold publicity stunts to distract from the low-key life of the artist.

I SHOULD HAVE JUMPED WHEN YOU TOLD ME TO. When Amber Bain invented The Japanese House, the singer talked about wanting anonymity and figuring out her gender expression. I must note that I using the pronouns she and her because that seems to be the singer's current expression of gender. I will try to update the post if I find out that I am mistaken or if the singer wants to change pronouns. Androgyny was the singer's original artistic expression. While Bain was hiding from the spotlight, fans of The 1975 saw Maty Healy's involvement in the project and even speculated that that it was Healy singing with processed vocals. Of course, this is false and Bain eventually revealed that she was the sole member of The Japanese House. Today's song, "Boyhood," also plays with gender expression. Bain told BBC1 about "Boyhood": 

        "I was thinking a lot about how I don’t really feel like a woman or a girl, and so it’s

        strange [be]cause I grew up as a girl and I didn’t have a boyhood. I was sort of

        thinking about that and how different I might be if I’ve had some sort of boyhood

        or I’ve had some different things happen to me in my life. The song itself had a

        hundred different versions of it and I feel like I’ve had a hundred different version         of myself that could’ve existed and it’s about like accepting some of those.

Today, gender expression is so controversial. It feels as if conservative society is pushing for a binary uniformity, pushing people to embrace a primal archetype. And that's not even how I grew up in what was supposed to be a more conservative time. What is the threat of people expressing the gender they feel is true to them? I think a song like "Boyhood" offers the first-person narrative that is always left out of the conservative straw-person arguments.

Read “Boyhood” by The Japanese House on Genius.