In Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart, she relays, in painstakingly intimate detail, the long process of losing her mother to cancer. It includes many glimpses of her life as a musician, of course, from the formation of her first Japanese Breakfast album Psychopomp, to her time on the road, to her sticking with music even though her mother wasn’t the most supportive of the idea when she was young. But the heart of the book is her relationship with her mother — often expressed through shared experiences of food and meals, usually traditional Korean dishes — and how it changed from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood, including right up to the moment her mother left for good.
It’s a heart-wrenching read, though that emotional undercurrent shouldn’t be a surprise to longtime Japanese Breakfast listeners. Under this alias, Zauner had long been crafting songs steeped in loss, grief, memory, heartbreak and longing. Whether atop buzzing lo-fi guitars or dreamy hi-fi synths and grooves, Japanese Breakfast has frequently mined the darker interiors of the human experience — you just might not have realized it. It took until her last record, 2021’s Jubilee, to finally make a record “about joy” (as she often described it), and even that included at least some lyrics touching on the loss of her mother. A cataclysmic event like that in one’s life often echoes outward for years, and her Japanese Breakfast discography serves as a living monument to that.
Now with her newest LP, Zauner is back in her sad bag. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) may take its title from lead single “Orlando in Love”, but that phrase almost serves as a darkly comic mission statement for her work thus far, and especially for this record. In stark contrast to Jubilee’s sugary rush of beats, keys, and groovy rhythms, For Melancholy Brunettes immediately sets itself apart as Zauner’s album “about melancholy,” so to speak. “There is Someone” is one of the most outright pretty songs Zauner has ever released, its mix of guitars, bass synth, gamelan, celeste, and more melding into an intoxicating spell of sound. Zauner’s voice is quiet and gentle, the music soaring behind her intermittently, before the song settles on a simple maxim: “Life is sad / But here is someone.”
The songs on For Melancholy Brunettes seem to range a bit more than usual in terms of narrator. Not every song here seems to be autobiographical, with various viewpoints apparently explored across its 10 songs. There’s the weary, ATV-watching couple at the heart of the one-two punch of the galloping “Mega Circuit” and sad sack folk of “Little Girl”. There’s pub-crawling wayward lovers on “Men in Bars” (one of whom is sung, in a shocking but delightful twist, by a well-cast Jeff Bridges). Then there are the more observational portraits, like “Orlando in Love”, watching as its titular lovesick poet who gets lured in by a siren and literally drowned for love, while Zauner’s string arrangements stride beside him.
The moments where Zauner’s own experiences leak through feel particularly revelatory, what with all the mixing of voices and mythology references that crop up across the album. While a song like “Winter in LA” might feel a bit slight compared to some others here, it does betray a startling bluntness when Zauner admits “I wish you had a happier woman”, and then spends the second half imagining what kind of person she’d be if she were a happier woman. “Picture Window” centers on her own obsessive thoughts of death, expressing disbelief that her partner doesn’t always imagine and worry about her untimely demise like she does his. And closer “Magic Mountain” obliquely and poetically uses the Thomas Mann novel about an extended stay in a sanatorium as a metaphor for coming out from under the perceived weight of your own artistry. After a long time working or touring, the song (and album) ends on a verse of gorgeous simplicity:
“Playing king, playing bride
Blooming in my leisure
Slipping hours left uncounted
You and me, and soon ours
Bury me beside you
In the shadow of my mountain”
Throughout, the sound of the record is enveloping. While this is her most intimate-sounding album, it does still kick into a brash higher gear from time to time. “Honey Water”, about an unfaithful spouse, has thundering drums, courtesy of Matt Chamberlain, and a nearly-shoegaze or dream pop veneer grinding amid Zauner’s deceptively sweet melody. “Mega Circuit” has a dark shuffle to it, a chug that feels sour and almost bratty, while “Picture Window” feels like an out-and-out indie rocker that wouldn’t have felt too out of place on past Japanese Breakfast records, even with the pedal steel winding in and out. And “Men in Bars” has all the swagger of a classic country rock murder ballad.
But more often than not, For Melancholy Brunettes is a subdued affair, dripping in acoustic guitar, washing synths, strings, slightly unusual instruments like zither and gamelan. Producer Blake Mills deploys some of his trademark tricks, such as in “Here is Someone” when the music blooms suddenly behind Zauner at specific moments, spacious and round (akin to his work on several songs on Perfume Genius’s No Shape). His work here perfectly suits what Zauner was after, crafting a nuanced cloud in which she positions her tales of longing, wondering, and, yes, melancholy.
The instrumentation throughout much of the record is pillowy and radiant, grounded often by cellos or bass synth, like little romantic sculptures. Zauner has said she missed playing guitar and wanted to focus more on that instrument on this LP, but it isn’t the jagged guitars of yore, more acoustic and finger-plucked. And her crystalline voice — potent and agile as ever — stands front and center, especially on ebbing tracks like “Leda”, which has arguably her strongest, most emotive vocal to date. The melancholy of the title arrives on the backs of every element in the mix, from the words to the singing to the music, concocting a world in which sadness and also appreciation of small, beautiful moments can coexist.
For Melancholy Brunettes may be a touch short, with some tracks ending a bit too soon, and it may not have the punch that past Japanese Breakfast albums have had. It certainly lacks some of the edge of those records. No one will be dancing to this album quite the same way as they might have to a song like “Be Sweet”, for example. But if able to surrender to its softer charms, it becomes clear that Zauner is moving into new waters with her songwriting here. If her first three records form a sort of triptych, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) forges a new path ahead under the gauze of a dawning sun, resulting in one of her strongest collections of songs yet, a finely-hewn and blushing jewel.
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