If there’s one thing Katelyn Tarver has proved over the years, it’s that she knows how to translate honesty into sheer gold, and her latest release, “Japanese Cafe,” might just be one of her most endearing examples yet. The 8th cut was dropped on December 29, 2023, off the sophomore album Quitter, set for release on February 9, 2024, on Nettwerk.
“Japanese Cafe” is a wistful, tongue-in-cheek postcard from Tarver’s youth, the teenage years when her pursuit of pop stardom took her to the other side of the world, into one of the weirdest gigs of her life. Imagine this. An impressionable 16-year-old Tarver, performing in a Japanese maid café dressed as a French maid, standing in front of a crowd of people who sat before her at school desks, with a boombox as her sound system. If that sounds like a sickbed delirium, that’s very much the point and why the song works. Written by Tarver, Annika Bennett, and Jonny Shorr, also producing, “Japanese Cafe” packages that are discomforting in their slick indie-pop production and evocative storytelling. There’s a humor to it all, a soft humor, a profound reflective grace. Tarver is not laughing at her younger self, she’s paying respect to her. And in that, she also invites listeners to do the same with their cringeworthy chapters.
Tarver’s serving up his tales of woe with an earnestness that comes off as entirely natural, sweetened by equal parts tenderness, longing, and irony. The production features soft textures and dreamy tones, creating a warm space where bittersweetness is a welcome guest.