In my head, I split Kero Kero Bonito's first three albums into a linear, emotionally-driven trilogy.

Intro Bonito is equally nostalgic and whimsical, almost experiencing itself, both ends weighted by the ancient, unavoidable prophecy of adult life.

Bonito Generation first reads as a higher-budget sequel, but upon further listening presents itself as a true dialectical merge of the two extremes presented two years prior. It's the same joyful stride from the first album, but trying to fit into a bigger world.

In Time 'n' Place, the overarching themes are of losing control of one's environment, and of everything moving too fast, and of feeling like you've fallen from grace, and it all comes together into an ode to thinking you've got it all figured out, and then burning out, really hard. It's completely different from anything they'd done previously, and I can't get through it without crying. I've been told that some people find this album to be largely happy, and it should also be noted that I have been known to cry listening to Intro Bonito, so this might not be everyone's experience with it, but this is probably my favorite album about mental health burnout.

When possible, I love listening to full albums with as little background context as possible, because it allows me to get an incredibly personal impression of it with my own series of emotional connections. When I did this with Time 'n' Place, I immediately got the impression that the entire album was about someone's time in a psych ward. I was, myself, struggling with depression when I first listened to it, which likely informed my opinion to some extent, but even the picture of Sarah on the cover gives me the impression of being taken for the purposes of in-patient psychiatry.

The upbeat tracks are about simple things, but they're all tinged with a frustration not present in KKB's earlier work. "Time Today" is about having a ton of time to do the things you want to do, but getting lost in the lack of structure. It's for when you feel compelled to say you're really busy when people ask, but you're unable to explain even to yourself what you're doing. "Only Acting," immediately after, is about when this exhaustion grows, and you find yourself dreading the implications of life whenever you're alone and can drop the act.

The more straightforward "sad songs," to me, are more about this frustration than they are sadness. "Visiting Hours" is the obvious first choice for this interpretation, which, despite being about one of the band members' parent's time in the hospital, has such strong undertones of in-patient care that I had to double-check the source. "We're already missing you; but please, take the time you need" echoes a loved one during visitation trying to let them know they're missed, while being painfully careful not to make them feel rushed in their recovery, and when I made that connection, I was pretty much unable to view the song in any other way.

Even the ones that aren't directly about personal strife, like "Dear Future Self," give the same impression in subtext: "Dear future self, it's me again; the girl you buried way back when" is such a poignant couplet, and it perfectly captures a really interesting dichotomy that I still think about often: You know your ideal future self has all but forgotten the hurt that shapes person you are today, but to make it through, you're spending all of your energy focusing on this future self. It's incredibly Nietzchean, now that I think about it; we build ourselves to be the bridge which our future, greater self crosses, thinking nothing of it.

This album is ostensibly not about any of these things, which is why I keep relating everything back to the fact that this is my opinion. None of the band members have talked about having done in-patient care (not that they should be expected to if they had). However, looking for information to write this review, I found a Reddit thread, posted much nearer to the album's release date, with a more granular explanation of the same theory, which at least lets me know that I'm not alone in this interpretation, like I am with Come to Daddy.

I'll stop rambling. I have three or four more KKB reviews to do, so I will have plenty the opportunity. The standout tracks I picked are the upbeat ones you can play around other people without having them ask if you're okay, most of the time. The whole album is worth listening to, if you're feeling really stable, or really unstable. Sometimes I accidentally put it on while doing my makeup, and it's like playing Jenga on a WWII bomber.

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