Japanese Breakfast – For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)
Michelle Zauner's follow up to Japanese Breakfast's breakthrough record Jubilee, For Melancholy Brunettes finds beauty in softer, darker sounds
The opening of Japanese Breakfast’s 2021 album Jubilee found frontwoman Michelle Zauner standing atop a glittering peak of artistic endeavour, asking: ‘How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers / To captivate every heart?’ Now, nearly four years on, the American artist opens her follow-up fourth LP by finding comfort in darkness, the optimism and splendour of Jubilee melted away into a soft cosmic haze as she sings, ‘Life is sad but here is someone’.
Produced by Grammy winner Blake Mills, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is awash with deep, velvety guitar, sultry strings and glinting piano. Lead single Orlando in Love is a panoramic, almost painterly retelling of a story from Italian Renaissance literature. Zauner’s vocals ebb and swell like the tide, while undulating strings seem to trace out mountain ranges.
The dense barrage of Honey Water recalls the smoky alt-rock of Zauner’s second album Soft Sounds from Another Planet, while Picture Window is a much brighter, busier tangle of country, rock and pop. Closing track Magic Mountain paints another gorgeous cinematic soundscape, scattered with clusters of celestial chimes. ‘Once the fever subsides, I’ll return to the flatlands a new man’, she sings, relinquishing the dizzying exultation of Jubilee for something murkier, subtler, more grounded.
Listen to: Orlando in Love, Picture Window, Magic Mountains