Love Letter To A Record: YoWo Music’s Pearl Harnath On Japanese Breakfast’s ‘Psychopomp’

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.


Pearl Harnath, YoWo Music – Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast

Dearest Psychopomp,

You feel like home. You feel like walking home after a long day, like leaving home for a big night, like lying in bed at 2am, or opening the window at 2pm to let the air in.

You seem to hold some genius magic that I wasn’t able to understand upon my first listen; I was definitely apprehensive. But then for the whole month of May I was unable to listen to anything else.

Your lyrics, I cannot even begin to articulate the warmth they create in my soul. How can you just say “I want to churn like amish butter” and then just move on as if that was nothing? I have no idea what that means, but I can feel it like a punch to the gut regardless. You make me want to scream along until I pass out. There is just so much emotion you hold that I can barely comprehend.

All of my favourite guitar riffs I owe to you, and each time I hear them I can feel something rattle in my bones. Then you go and pair them with your phenomenal vocals? What did you expect? How am I supposed to not fall in love?

How am I supposed to not fall in love when you have the most beautiful keys, the vocals of an angel, drums that I feel in my chest, lyrics that pierce my heart? I am certainly not being dramatic enough when one considers the scale at which you have changed my life.

‘In Heaven’ is something bittersweet, a track I will dance to in my room while crying. ‘The Woman That Loves You’ is a song that can only be loved and yelled to. ‘Rugged Country’ feels like a sore chest. ‘Psychopomp’ and ‘Jane Cum’ hurt like nothing else ever has. Then you really just destroy me with ‘Triple 7’, in the night you really are someone else.

The first time I heard the guitar in ‘Heft’ I knew that was it for me, and that no other album would ever provide to me the sweet perfect understanding that you have given to me.

You are genius, you are perfect, and I will love you forever.

It is always Psychopomp, always.

Pearl

YoWo Music is a Melbourne-based contemporary music program for girls and gender non-conforming youth in high school. Their debut album ‘Work Like That’ is out now.

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