Japanese Breakfast @ SLC Twilight 09.05.2025

Japanese Breakfast on stage with blue lighting and a giant clam shell ini the back. Photo: Nathan Gentry.

Japanese Breakfast took the stage with some amazing pop melodies. Photo: Nathan Gentry.

Concert

The Gallivan Center is one of the best places to catch the sunset in Salt Lake City. While it doesn’t offer the grand vistas you get at Ensign Peak or Red Butte Garden, there’s something special about how the waning light cascades between the windows of the tall buildings surrounding the plaza, flooding everything with multifaceted radiance as the sky pinkens towards dusk. What better venue for an SLC Twilight concert? Against this dazzling backdrop, local group Tomper (who we later learned Michelle Zauner hand-selected to be her opener) took the stage to kick off Friday evening’s concert with some feel-good indie jams.

Tomper was followed by Ginger Root, who put on one of the funnest shows I’ve seen in a long time. The funky three-piece hit the perfect balance between unserious and virtuosic, playing bangers like “Loretta,” “Karaoke” and “Weather” while their dancing cameraman filmed extreme closeups of each member’s solos and goofy faces projected onto screens on both sides of the stage. Near the end of this jocular set, frontman Cameron Lew took a moment to express how much Japanese Breakfast meant to him in college and how cool it was to be touring with them all these years later.

When Ginger Root finished, roadies began setting up for the main event by rolling out an immense, Birth of Venus-style clam shell that stood centerstage amidst swirling mist from the fog machines. Not long after, Zauner and her bandmates came out to riotous applause from the crowd. The band eased in by providing some dreamy ambience while Zauner trotted over to the microphone to light a lantern, then swept into “Here is Someone,” the twinkling first track from their new record, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women).

The band drew heavily from the new album all night, playing marvelous renditions of standouts like “Picture Window,” “Magic Mountain” and “Honey Water,” but they also treated us to a healthy selection of hits from their backlog, including “Road Head” and “The Body is a Blade” — a personal favorite of mine. For several of the softer songs, Zauner climbed up into the clam shell with her acoustic guitar to sing like a musical pearl.

The night’s best moment came during “Slide Tackle” when, after playfully dancing around in her combat boots, Zauner shouted, “Salt Lake City, let’s jump!” and every person in the audience complied. How could we not? The ground in front of the Gallivan Center’s stage is made of solid concrete, but I swear to God it reverberated like a wooden deck beneath the weight of each collective hop.

Japanese Breakfast finished out the night with an explosive performance of “Diving Woman” and then sent us all off to wander home in the chill darkness. Throughout her set, Zauner had paused from singing several times to share memories from previous shows she’d played in Salt Lake, and I think we made some new ones together that night. I hope she never stops coming through to make them with us.