More about: The Japanese House

“Fantasy is, I think, the defining cliché of female queerness”, writes Carmen Maria Machado, “To find desire, love, everyday joy without men’s accompanying bullshit is a pretty decent working definition of paradise.” 

We begin in the thick of the fantasy itself, “lying on your chest / I think I know you best”, Amber Bain sings on the album’s opener, ‘Spot Dog’. With its bursts of swirling strings and auto-tuned vocal snippets, the track feels like Bain tuning up, readying her audience for the performance ahead that will follow the beginnings and endings of relationships, only for them to begin anew. The cycle repeats itself, because in the end it always does. 

Fantasy also appears in varying shapes and sizes, both romantic and otherwise. On ‘Friends’ our narrator navigates the unfamiliar relationship dynamics of a throuple; “Do I think about her more than you? Do I touch the way you want me to?” The track feels somewhat tied to the album’s other pop-driven counterpart ‘Touching Yourself’, which sees intimacy now interrupted by distance; “I wanna touch you but you’re too far away”. Bain alludes to more than just a physical remoteness, though – that this need for touch is also masking an emotional detachment; “When you call me I’m all over the place”, she sings on the line that immediately follows.

Bain parts from this romantic contingent on ‘Over There’ – a track that leans into the synth-driven production that is more familiar to previous records, particularly 2019’s Good At Falling. A striking debut, Good At Falling put Bain’s career in motion, also proving the strength of her collaboration with George Daniel of The 1975. The duo reunite on ITEIAD and appear more fortified than ever, with Daniel’s signature percussion fitting perfectly against the album’s 80s-inspired pop, such as the indulgent drum fill before the final chorus on ‘Friends’. However, this time Bain is also joined by producer and engineer Chloe Kraemer (Rex Orange County, Lava La Rue, Glass Animals), expanding her creative team that only works in the album’s favour. Consequently, the product draws from a wider array of sounds and influences outside of pop music purity, making room for some of Bain’s most sincere songwriting. 

Perhaps this is down to the collaboration with Kraemer’s after all – an experience Bain describes as “life changing”, remarking that “I’d never worked with a woman or queer person [in that way] before. It’s nice to have someone who completely understands your standpoint and shared experience. Also, I say ‘she’ in every song… so it’s important that someone understands that.” United in shared experiences, Bain also invites Katie Gavin of MUNA to contribute in both writing and recording capacities. Gavin’s sultry vocals fit perfectly against Bain’s own crooning voice on ‘Morning Pages’, and her lilting melodies are similarly evident on the closer ‘One for Sadness, Two For Joni Jones’, which Gavin also co-wrote.

One of the record’s greatest strengths is its unabashed discussions surrounding queerness and sexuality. Setting the tone on lead-single ‘Boyhood’, Bain contemplates the entrapments of gender identity, opting to not conform altogether; “I could’ve been somebody else / but I’ve been out looking for me”. A strong entrance to the world of ITEIAD, Bain demands liberty from these constraints, instead desiring to “change beneath the evening lights”, a sentiment that remains striking against its country-pop production – a particularly impactful choice considering corner of the industry that remains restrictive when it comes to such ideas surrounding gender expression. 

"Drifting between accepting solitude and desperately yearning for connection, ITEIAD is a candid portrait of navigating the romantic world and its various entrappings."

These excursions on self-examination are interwoven throughout the record, placed against the explorations of relationships, and prove to unlock some of its most powerful statements. ‘Indexical Reminder Of A Morning Well Spent’ sees Bain recounting her daily habits, once more reinforcing the presence of cycles in her life that fail to contribute to the change she searches for. Upon hearing the preliminary guitar strums, one associates the guitar sound with an early Joni Mitchell, crafting melodies from her most interior thoughts to create lyrical poetry that Bain emulates on this very track. Her apathy matched by sparse and sprawling instrumentation that shortly enters, she describes days spent glancing over books but never taking in the words on the page, surrounded by clutter, watching the same clip “round and round and round”, the image of a loop cropping up yet again. 

We soon arrive at ‘Sunshine Baby’, a song that feels more like a wish than anything else. Attempting to hold on to the parts of ourselves that feel lost without another person that made us complete, its melodies are grounded in pop but aren't afraid to demand patience from the listener. Bain instead takes her time, tracking the journey from intimacy to estrangement, before shortly longing for the “feeling that you get when someone fits just like a glove”. Before we anticipate the return to verse, the production is stripped down to its strings, with Matty Healy entering to sing a counter-melody that continues through the final chorus, kitted out with the carolling warmth of a saxophone in its final moments. It’s a song that uses production so effectively to emulate the feeling Bain describes, placing the listener in that very backseat, driving along the coastline towards a connection that lingers just over the horizon. 

Drifting between accepting solitude and desperately yearning for connection, ITEIAD is a candid portrait of navigating the romantic world and its various entrappings. During a time when we are taught to prioritise ourselves, to preserve this sense of self that can often get lost amongst intense passion, Bain is willing to call it like it is. It is so rare to find pop music that does so, that holds honesty at its core despite the potential for rejection, creating an album that feels immediately resonant. “Love was never the issue. I never wasn’t in love,” says Bain. “But I realised I wasn’t in love with myself.” And although fantasies drift in and out of focus, without the self the centre cannot hold, and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself once again.

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More about: The Japanese House