After hearing Amber Bain’s latest album, In The End It Always Does earlier this year, going to see The Japanese House at Rescue Rooms was a no-brainer for The Mic’s Izzy Morris. Here is her thoughts on the evening…
I was incredibly, incredibly impressed with our support act for the evening; pencil. Riley, a fellow Mic
writer and my company for the evening, and I both agreed that we are particularly loving this current
resurgence of baroque-esque pop music within the indie music scene, and pencil are yet another
example of why looking towards classical instruments when building music can create such
wonderful sounds. Coco Inman had audience members swooning with each stroke of her violin while
Cai Burns’ delicious fuzziness on guitar weaved perfectly with the delicate vocals of Kamran Khan.
While The Japanese House sometimes falls within a dancier realm of indie-dreampop, pencil was a
fantastic choice to open the night with, creating a carefully calculated serenity. Their intricate sound
still managed to make itself apparent, and was still incredibly present in the room. They recently
signed to Moshi Moshi Records, previously home to Lykke Li, Friendly Fires and Florence and the
Machine, so I am sure there will be a lot of excitement on the horizon for pencil.
Combining upbeat, glittery indie-pop and gorgeously emotional slower numbers, Amber Bain
constructed a set list that appealed to both older fans of The Japanese House, and those discovering
her for the first time after the release of her incredibly popular new album, In The End It Always
Does. Opening with Sad to Breathe, Bain instantly showed light and shade, mixing melancholy with
the breakthrough of drums in the second verse, bringing the room to life.

She followed up with two massive crowd pleasers – Touching Yourself and Something Has To
Change, which both injected a wonderful dose of vibrancy into the black box venue. Equally though,
some of the lesser known album tracks still beautifully showcased the magic of The Japanese House,
sounding eerily close to the way that they sound on the record. It’s difficult for me to tell if the
crowd was just really intently listening, or less interested in some of the album tracks, but either way
there was noticeably less interaction, which is a shame. It really felt like Bain was putting herself into
these songs, getting emotional during her performances which explains why the album has touched
so many of her fans.
"It’s real, it’s intricate and it’s human."
During her set, she made jokes with the band about the use of the saxophone on stage, (which I
really wish I saw and heard at more gigs; I am tired of meat and two veg, standard band
performances) and also played off forgetting her own lyrics to the particularly heart-wrenching track
Chewing Cotton Wool like a star, creating a one off intimate moment with the audience. This slip-
up did not hamper the magic of the track at all, reducing the number of dry eyes in Rescue Rooms by
quite a few.
The encore took this trend one step further with One for Sorrow, Two for Joni Jones, which
immediately brought The Mic’s Olivia Hannant to tears, being a huge The Japanese House fan.
Despite being less familiar with Amber Bain, and being a much newer listener, this one still managed
to really move me. It was a really brilliant choice for the encore, summing up what makes Bain’s
songwriting so special. It’s real, it’s intricate and it’s human.
And to wrap the whole evening up, the band brought us a much more upbeat ending with Sunshine,
Baby. Wiping away our tears, we danced along to the interwoven synths, saxophone, and the
audience turned choir. Rescue Rooms were treated to something special when The Japanese House
came to town.
Izzy Morris
Edited by Tabitha Smith
Feature Image courtesy of Japanese House on Facebook
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