Japanese Breakfast Is Sad Again, and We’re Not Complaining

After years of touring their Grammy-nominated album exploring the complexities of joy, Japanese Breakfast has flipped the script with the release of their fourth record, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). While long-time fans know the indie-rock band is no stranger to sorrow, the direction of this new project – primarily featuring guitar-based ballads – is a surprise, given the recent success of their pop anthems “Be Sweet” and “Slide Tackle.” This new route is certainly not unwelcome, as the band triumphs in their use of wonderfully textured instrumentals, vulnerable vocals, and frequent allusions to the long tradition of melancholia found in the literary canon. Many attractions lie in this album, making it perfect for both longtime fans interested in the dark depths lurking behind frontwoman Michelle Zauner’s brisk lyricism and newcomers who simply enjoy a good wallow-sesh.

Gorgeous strings, woodwinds, and guitar instrumentals open the album on the track “Here is Someone,” making it sound straight out of a Zelda game. The song’s lyrics set a thematic motif in the album, with the speaker longing for more stability and stillness in their life. Despite this permeating unhappiness, the singer acknowledges finding comfort in the fact that someone is there to love them. Lead single “Orlando in Love” is the second track, and it’s an allusion to Orlando Innamorato, an epic Italian poem about a knight completing quests to win the hand of his beloved. While the song is certainly a departure from other Japanese Breakfast hits, the lyrics and heavy-hitting instrumentation make it an astute choice to precede the album. Michelle Zauner balances epic language and an air of fantasy with the modern struggles of a musician, especially seen in lyrics like “He cast his gaze towards the sea out the Winnebago.” This single came paired with a music video in which Zauner plays the knight Orlando as he writes cantos, runs from society, and expresses his love for Venus, who stands in a giant shell. The video is playful, poking fun at the lengths we go for love and inspiration, even when it leads to our own inevitable demise.

The lyrics in the next two tracks continue to express the same bleak tone, although they are far more sonically upbeat. The narrator of “Honey Water” questions why their lover is unfaithful, with the final few minutes containing the repeating refrain, “So, it goes / I don’t mind.” Many of the songs on For Melancholy Brunettes take this refrain approach, which effectively characterizes the album’s speaker as someone who feels defeated by life intruding around them. “Mega Circuit,” the album's second single, embodies a satirical, “I can fix him!” attitude with the singer sharing their chaotic devotion to an incel: “Well, I better write my baby a shuffle good / Or he’s gonna make me suffer the way I should.” The instrumentals are fun and lively, and the music video features Zauner riding an ATV in the woods and carrying shotguns. While this is a switch-up from the high-brow allusions in other songs, “Mega Circuit” still feels cohesive in the project; lyrical desperation emphasizes a character unable to protest the misogyny of men who take advantage of her.

“Little Girl” brings the tone back down as it contains the point of view of a parent who longs for their daughter to communicate with them. It’s hard not to theorize that this song is about Zauner’s father, who she admits to having an estranged relationship with. She sang from his perspective previously in her 2021 song “Tactics,” in which the speaker moves overseas to maintain emotional distance from someone who cares about them. “Leda,” the next song, is in conversation with its predecessor; the singer describes calling someone from halfway across the world who is sinking into their addictions and sorrows. It’s a literary allusion to one of the many women that Zeus assaults in Greek mythology, and it tragically but effectively connects the song’s subject to gods who mess with mortals to get what they want.

A highlight on the album is “Picture Window,” a song that contains devastatingly relatable lyrics like the refrain “Are you not afraid of every waking minute / That your life could pass you by?” Zauner directed an accompanying music video, depicting an individual in a relationship who becomes increasingly anxious about something bad happening and begins to stumble and falter behind their partner, who runs forward boldly and unabashedly. The imagery comes across as an invert of the myth of Orpheus, further linking this album cycle to a wide literary culture of dejection. The video works in tandem with the song’s robust lyricism, highlighting the self-destructive nature of putting too much weight on one thing.

More committed fans of Japanese Breakfast will recognize “Men in Bars” as a revamping of the track “Ballad 0” from Zauner’s 2020 passion project with Ryan Galloway, under the name BUMPER. The song takes a turn for the better here, with collaborator Jeff Bridges' airy but deep vocals complementing both Zauner’s voice and the lyrics. “Winter in LA” is a surprise upon first listen, as it contains an uncharacteristically happy musical tone. Upholding this album’s motif, however, the lyrics pull listeners back into woe as the speaker wishes that their partner had a “happier woman” who could “leave the house” and is “Sweet and warm / Like winter in LA.” Finally, the project concludes with “Magic Mountain,” a final literary allusion referencing Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel about a German man who journeys to visit his ill cousin in the Swiss Alps. The song is perfectly heavy and concludes with the lyrics: “Bury me beside you in the shadow of my mountain.” This produces a satisfying full circle moment to “Here is Someone,” as both songs have similar tones of grief and longing, but the speaker still finds some comfort in having a muse to sing about and to.

Japanese Breakfast delivered on handing listeners an album about depression, reflection, and the impermanence of indulgence. As with their previous records, this is not a depiction lacking nuance. While dissatisfaction and defeatism rest on the surface of the lyrics, deep down there lies a complex portrayal of an utterly affected person, which consequently brings out the highs (as seen by Michelle Zauner’s grinning face as she cruises on an ATV in her music video), and the lows (Orlando being left breathless and drowned by his fervor in the lyrics of the lead single). The album’s cover, displaying a passed-out Zauner with wine and food on a table around her, presents a perfect microcosm of the listening experience. Despite only sitting at 32 minutes, this feast of a record could leave even the most stoic listener full of feeling. Japanese Breakfast made this for the melancholy brunettes and the sad women, yes, but it’s also for the burnouts, for the Classics majors, the artists, the romantics and the Romanticists, those inspired by everything, those inspired by nothing, and all in between.