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Japanese Breakfast - Savage Good Boy

“Savage Good Boy” trounces along, building on a steady percussion and muted synths interlaced with striking piano chords to support Zauner’s sweet vocals. It uses its four verses to paint a picture of an apocalyptic future (or, perhaps, a warped present) in which a billionaire courts someone to join him as the eventual other last person in the world. Zauner does not waste a single line, leaning into her character and packing each with clever phrases that wink at the listener, declaring that this savage good boy will be “absolved from questioning / That all my bad behavior was a necessary strain / They’re the stakes in the race to win” and telling his lover that “when the city’s underwater / I will wine and dine you in the hollows / On a surplus of freeze-dried food.” Its lyrical content is reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s “Talkin’ World War III Blues” which also imagines a comically apathetic speaker entering a ruined world.

Yves Tumor - Gospel for a New Century

“Gospel for a New Century” is triumphant. It opens with a staggered fanfare guiding the listener into the track, starting and stopping at its own will, and roaring the entrance of the crooning Yves Tumor. “I think I can solve it,” they declare with such conviction that I begin to believe they really can. They dance their way into the chorus, where the instruments come crashing down on themselves, folding over like a wave, as Tumor proclaims, “This ain’t by design, girl.” By whose design they mean, I can’t really tell: but that’s the essence of Yves Tumor’s gospel, one preached for the faithful and the faithless, the sensible and the senseless— one perfectly adapted for the modern world.

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Japanese Breakfast - Savage Good Boy

Yves Tumor - Gospel for a New Century