A jazz bassist by trade and a songwriter at heart, the Australian-born, Brooklyn-based artist leads Georgia Weber and the Sleeved Hearts with warmth, wit, and a fierce emotional clarity. Big in Japan, her band's long-awaited new EP, is a tender, thematically rich collection inspired by Japanese traditions and folk tales - a whimsical and wonder-filled meditation on grief, love, memory, and the art of holding things sacred, even after they've cracked. At once soft-spoken and full-bodied, these songs explore what it means to break and to heal, to lose and to carry, to leave and to find your way back changed. They're bittersweet and poignant, but still hopeful and beautiful - stories that shimmer in their sadness, and shine in their humanity.
Big in Japan is Georgia Weber and the Sleeved Hearts' first release since their 2022 covers album No Standards, and a stirring return that blends Weber's jazz foundation with indie folk storytelling and lyrical intimacy. Years in the making, the EP is as much a personal reflection as it is a cross-cultural homage, uniting Weber with her longtime bandmates Kenji Herbert (Arooj Aftab, Yuhan Su) on guitar and Nathan Ellman-Bell (Brass Against, Cat Torren Band) on drums - each of whom brings a wealth of talent and improvisational flair to the recordings. The EP's six tracks were recorded over several years at Weber's own Wildwood Recording Studio in Brooklyn, in between touring schedules and transatlantic flights. Herbert, who now lives in Vienna, flew in to contribute parts inspired by his own Japanese heritage - including the EP's bookending performances. From start to finish, Big in Japan unfolds with grace and gusto: A songwriter rediscovering her voice through the voices and stories of others, letting each song bloom with emotional depth, whimsy, and spontaneity.
Born in Brisbane, Australia, Georgia Weber grew up with Bill Evans and Ella Fitzgerald in her ears, Nirvana and Crowded House on her sister's stereo, and a double bass in her hands. She fronted a short-lived pop-punk band and studied jazz performance at Queensland Conservatorium before moving to Melbourne, fronting and gigging across Australia's indie and jazz scenes. In 2013, she relocated to New York City with a desire to "get her butt kicked" - to learn from the jazz genre's birthplace and study under greats like Ron Carter.
"I came here to learn the historic context," she says, "but at the time, Ron Carter and Miles Davis weren't sitting around thinking about how to make their record jazzier; they were just making music that was good to them." That ethos shaped The Sleeved Hearts from the start: A project where simple songs meet sophisticated musicianship, and where improvisation isn't a feature; it's the framework. A point of pride, for Weber, is that no two performances are ever the same.
The seeds of Big in Japan were planted by accident and happenstance. Weber first composed "Wind Telephone" after hearing a This American Life segment about a real-life phone booth in Otsuchi, Japan, where thousands grieving loved ones lost to the 2011 tsunami came to speak to the dead. "I was on the subway, ugly crying," she recalls. "It was this story of humans at their best through their grief." Next came "Kintsugi," a love song written mid-argument with her husband - an ode to sticking it out even on the hardest days, built around the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Once two tracks were unintentionally linked by Japanese influence, Weber reached out to guitarist Kenji Herbert, who is himself of Japanese-Austrian heritage, for a third. His response was the story of Urashima Tar? - a surreal Japanese folktale of time, distance, and the ache of never really being able to go home. "I related to it so much as an expat," Weber says. "You step away, you grow, and suddenly the place you left isn't the same - or maybe it's you who's changed."