Through the entirety of my interview with Amber Bain backstage at Hinterland, Joni Jones the dachshund snoozed soundly, wrapped in a scarf in her lap.
“She actually is a bit high right now,” Bain told me, recalling the hectic flight scramble to get both she and her dog to the festival in St. Charles. The flight medication had made her beloved pet groggy, but no more relaxed than her usual, non-sedated self. (“She's a chiller,” Bain confirmed.)
Joni comes everywhere with Bain, who onstage goes by her solo musical project name, The Japanese House. Not only is the 3-year-old black-and-brown dachshund regularly featured on the UK-based singer’s Instagram — she also shows up in her music. “One for sorrow, two for Joni Jones,” the final song on Bain’s 2023 album, In the End It Always Does, is a somber confirmation that a relationship has come to an end. But the wandering track, written with MUNA’s Katie Gavin, is speckled with glimpses of Joni and her constant companionship through Bain’s breakup with an ex.
“No, that’s just how I get into the trap / No one’s ever gonna love me like this dog lying on my lap / No one’s ever made me feel so stable / No one has been able to,” Bain sings over the gentle piano accompaniment.
“I was so sad, obviously, but I still had to go to the studio and walk the dog,” Bain told me about the inspiration for the song. She recalled taking Joni to a park in London and coming to the realization that, “‘Well, if we do end up breaking up, and I'm heartbroken, I'll still just be here every day with my little Joni Jones.”
In the End It Always Does is The Japanese House’s second studio album. It explores beginnings — and endings — and the cyclical nature of life and thought, written as the painful breakup unfolded. Along the way, it contemplates queerness, particularly in “Boyhood,” the first single released ahead of the album, and, coincidentally, the last song written for it before Bain departed for a post-breakup trip to L.A.
Now, Bain is stepping into a new era. She’s recently engaged and currently writing a love album, which she’s already released the first single from, simply — and joyfully — entitled ":)" (Smiley Face).
"Smiley Face" dances with the dizzying ecstasy that comes with falling in love. "My friends will think I'm crazy / And maybe I am / But who cares? / 'Cause something's happening / I feel happier / I could be losing my mind / But something's happening," Bain sings.
But she told me the album won’t be “all the same sort of frantic, crazed happiness" as "Smiley Face" and she admitted that it hasn’t come as naturally to write about love as it did to write songs reflecting on deep sadness and pain. Writing about joy, she said, takes a different kind of vulnerability.
“I actually find it really hard to write about happiness without sort of cringing myself out. And so there's kind of been this release,” she said. “In order to write 'Smiley Face,' for example, I just had to sort of release any kind of care about what other people think and sort of embrace the really cheesy…. elated stuff that I wanted to say, and I kind of just wanted to write something that narrated our relationship, because I think it's a really special relationship, and I think I want to document it because I want to remember everything.”
Even if it has been a challenge, Bain wants it to be honest. Her vulnerability has paid off in the past, and of course, she’ll have her dog by her side along the way.
“Usually by this point, I'd be picking [the album] apart, telling myself how sh— it is. But actually, I love [In the End It Always Does], and so I want to do the same again,” she said. “And I think the only way you can do that is just being honest in your music and honest in your lyrics, and honest when you like stuff, and honest when you don't, and surrounding yourself with people that really care about the music and just forget about basically everything else.”
To hear this conversation, listen to IPR's Studio One on demand or on air at 94.1 in Des Moines (or find your signal here). This interview is by Josie Fischels and produced/edited by Phil Maass. Video created and edited by Lucius Pham.
