Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner) has had a cloakroom at the Union Transfer in Philadelphia named in her honour, hot on the heels of her five-night run headlining the venue.
A Philly native herself, Zauner sold out all five of her shows at the 1,200-capacity venue. It was somewhat of a full-circle moment for the acclaimed singer-songwriter, as she’d worked at the venue – as a coat-checker, no less – when it first opened in 2011.
As such, the venue’s cloakroom has now been officially dubbed The Michelle Zauner Coat Check. Zauner shared the news on her Instagram, posing with the cloakroom’s tip bucket and declaring: “I love Philly the most.”
Local publication The Key reports that Zauner reminisced about her Union Transfer origins during her show on Sunday (August 15). “I didn’t even really have the ambition at that time to be like, ‘That’ll be me one day,’” she said. “I was just like, ‘I want to work at a cool venue.’”
Apparently, during a stint working concessions, Zauner once accepted a fake $100 bill someone used to pay for a $1 pretzel, giving them $99 in actual change. The lost cash was pulled from Zauner’s wage, but as she mused to concertgoers, “Sean [Agnew], my boss, paid it off for me. And now we’ve paid him back by playing five sold-out shows at Union Transfer!”
Zauner’s hometown shows were performed in celebration of her third album as Japanese Breakfast, ‘Jubilee’, which landed back in June via Dead Oceans. Flanked by the singles ‘Be Sweet’, ‘Posing In Bondage’ and ‘Savage Good Boy’, the album also saw Zauner take the stage for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and CBS This Morning.
In a four-star review of ‘Jubilee’, NME writer Will Richards said: “Even when things get musically darker … there remains a prioritisation of pop melody; the fat is trimmed from all 10 songs on the record, leaving perfectly formed three-and-a-half-minute pop songs that want – and deserve – to be blasting out of your radio.”
Zauner chased the LP’s release with a Simlish redux of ‘Be Sweet’ and a live cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Here You Come Again’. She’s set to follow ‘Jubilee’ up with a full-length soundtrack for the video game Sable, due for release on September 23.
She’s also set to perform at the Levitation Fest in Austin, Texas come the last weekend of October, headlining alongside such acts as Thundercat, Black Midi and Red Fang.
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